Shades From the Past
by The Sword Maker
Summary: (Post EW, with Karin-Sama as coAuthor.) The pilots discover that the grave has little hold over those who seek revenge against their enemies.


Shades From the Past

By

The Sword Maker

&

Karin-Sama

The_sword_maker_lives@hotmail.com

Shinigamis_wings@hotmail.com

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER! PLEASE READ! 

Okay, people. Inasmuch as present negotiations are not yet completed, I **do not** own Gundam Wing or any associated characters. This is a piece of fanfiction that is not intended to bring in any money. The picture of the Gundam included herein was found through Morpheus (www.morpheus.net ); however, no one who had the picture could give me any information regarding the artist or the owner of the picture.  Hence, I cannot disclaim it. If you are aware of the owner/artist of that picture, please e-mail me at the above link and tell me.

This fanfic picks up the just before the ending sequence in "Endless Waltz." 

Sword Maker's Note: This fic and the entire plot line are entirely my creation. Karin-sama, while not agreeing with me at all as to the ending of the story, was gracious enough to aid me.

Karin-sama's note: I do not enjoy the idea of Relena and Heero together; but as this really wasn't my story - I was just asked to help at a few places - I'm going to hold my tongue and see if I can't at least patch up the original ending.

Sword Maker: That said, on with the fic!

28 December, A.C. 196

The hospital halls were quiet that night. Only the faint hum of electronic devices gave any indication that there was life in those sterile passages. Then the muffled patter of footsteps on tile floor shattered the silence. 

The nurse moved through the hallways on her rounds. One after another the wards were found to be still, the restful breathing of the patients recovering from all manner of illness and injury filling the rooms. However, as she approached one room, a faint unease stirred in her mind. Hesitantly she pushed the door open, hoping that _this _patient would be sound asleep from the medications given to him earlier. A shudder ran up her spine as she recalled that it had taken no less than four orderlies and three doctors to subdue the youth long enough for a fourth doctor to pump him full of sedative. And he'd been severely wounded at the time.

Her apprehension faded somewhat when she saw the steady rise and fall of his chest. Deep, even breaths emanating from the lone occupant filled the room. The nurse crept in on silent feet and quickly checked the vitals and IV of what was the most unique person ever admitted to the hospital. Finding all in order she backed away, keeping the young man in her sight at all times. The door closed behind her with a soft, barely audible thud. Sudden movement broke the stillness as blue eyes, cold as liquid nitrogen, opened. After staring for a few moments after the fleeing nurse, the eyes closed. 

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29 December, A.C. 196

Relena Dorlian Peacecraft, Vice-Foreign Minister of the Earth Sphere United Nations, Queen of the Cinq Kingdom, and Dove of Peace, walked into the hospital that chilly winter morning. As she walked through the halls to her destination, she watched as those in the hospital went about their daily routines. Nowhere was there any sign that, just days ago, a nine-year-old girl had threatened to destroy the fragile peace of the world. 

With a slight shake of her head, she turned her gaze to the room she had stopped at. Pushing the door open, Relena went in and sat in the chair near the head of the bed. The steady rise and fall of Heero's chest was the only movement from it. 

"Well, Heero," she said, "how was your day?" There was no answer, but she hadn't expected there to be. In unhurried tones, she told him of her day. Somehow she found herself on the subject of the talk she had had with Mariemaia as the capitol building sank into the fortified bunker below. 

"She said: 'History is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace, and revolution continue on forever.' We're in the peace stage right now. I wonder how long it will be before we descend into war once more? Will we be able to survive more battles?" Her vision blurred with tears as she thought of the people in her kingdom. Her thoughts then drifted to her brother and Noin. The other pilots and the women that had become their friends and confidants. Heero. The knowledge that they could die was breaking her heart. Relena stood and gently kissed Heero's still forehead. Unnoticed by her, a tear fell onto his face. She straightened up and whispered a "get well, Heero" before gliding out the way she had come.

The tear that had fallen began to slide down Heero's cheek. Suddenly a finger touched it and brushed it off. Suspended at the end of a slim digit that belied the deadly strength buried within, the tear was brought even with two pools of indigo. 

"An endless waltz," he whispered. Thoughts raced through his head. Stratagem were formed and discarded or added to his plan. "Mission accepted."

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30 December, A.C. 196

Relena walked through the door to her office in the Peacecraft mansion, and sat at her desk. For a few moments she just sat there, then she shook her head and grabbed some papers. A few minutes later a head poked in her door. She looked up quickly, and smiled. 

"Duo!" she cried. Her joy at seeing her friend faded as she took in his sober expression. A frown creased her face as she took in the grim expression on the face of _Deathscythe's_ pilot. "What is it, Duo?"

Duo took a deep breath and plunged right in. "He's gone, Relena." Her face went white as the meaning hit home. There could be only one person to whom Duo was referring. Her voice was faint as she whispered Heero's name. Duo nodded and looked away, unable to bear the pain in her eyes. "The hospital called just a few minutes ago. He disappeared during the night. The security systems had all been tampered with, they said."

Relena nodded tightly and slowly turned her chair to the side. "Thank you, Duo," she whispered. "Thank you for letting me know." Duo blushed and stammered his way out of the room. His parting sentence had been something along the lines of if Relena needed anyone to talk to, he and Hilde would gladly lend a shoulder, but Relena had barely registered it. For several hours she sat in her office, still as stone and looking out the window. 

That night as she crawled into bed, she reached her hand out to her nightstand and picked up the stuffed bear that Heero had given her. She cuddled it close and went to sleep. The tiny animal was the only witness to the tear that slipped out from her closed eyes to trickle down her cheek. It disappeared into the bear's soft fur.

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14 March, A.C. 197

The shadow slid along the wall, looking, as far as any observer could tell, like a mere ambulatory silhouette. It stopped outside of an open window, freezing when voices reached its ears. Sally Po and Chang Wufei were bidding each other goodnight. "Remember, Wufei, we have an early morning. Up at 5:30." 

Wufei's cold voice split the night. "I was getting up at such hours before I could walk, woman! Do not think that I will be unable to do so now." 

A faint silvery laugh drifted out the window as Sally closed her door. The dark figure was motionless, waiting for all signs of movement to cease. After nearly a half an hour, and hearing deep, even breathing that signaled that the occupant was sleeping, the shade levered itself into Sally's bedroom. Even as it moved, a hypodermic needle held firmly in one hand, Sally's subconscious recognized another presence in the room. As she struggled to open her eyes, the shadow launched itself through the air to land on her back. The air in her lungs exploded from her mouth in a single gust. A hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off her choked cry as a sharp pain erupted in her arm. A sudden rush of fire in her veins told her what that pain had been even as her mind fell into a death-like void. She'd been drugged.

Thunderous pounding on the door brought Sally back to the land of the living. She tried to sit up, stifling a groan of agony as her head pounded in time with the fist on her door. Wufei's voice suddenly boomed into a pause in the knocking, the tone and timbre amplified unbearably by her headache. She staggered to the door and ripped it open just before Wufei's fist descended upon it anew. 

"Sally, you look like death warmed over," said Wufei after taking a close look at her face. Sally blinked in confusion and turned to the bathroom, nearly falling over twice as she struggled to make it across a floor that seemed to be made of sticky molasses. Wufei jumped forward and caught her arm just before a third loss of balance would have planted her face two feet down in the ground. "You don't look like you slept at all," he growled as he helped her to the bathroom. Sally was forced to make an affirmative sound as she took in her appearance. Dark, heavy bags under her eyes showed a lack of sleep. But she had slept, hadn't she? Sally just wasn't too sure anymore. Her head pounded briefly and a voice roared in her ears. She _knew_ this voice. But what was the question? As she struggled to remember, she heard Wufei's voice echo in her ears. 

"What?" she gasped, ripped from her reverie. 

"You know whose voice?" he repeated, scowling at her. She shook her head, suddenly losing her train of thought.

"I don't know," she whispered. 

Wufei's expression didn't change one bit. After a moment's deliberation, he said, "You go back to bed. We'll get started tomorrow." After seeing her to bed, he made a call to Lady Une, letting her know that Sally Po was ill and wouldn't be working today.

*****************************************************************************  

15 June, A.C. 197

It was cold and damp in the cave, hardly good living conditions. A massive form loomed against one wall. Opposite it on the other wall of the cavern was a shadowy skeleton. Faint sparks of light erupted from the skeletal shape as a human form struggled to free something from inside. With a muffled "ah!" of triumph, the person emerged and went to a table. A crystal pillar nearly a foot tall was set on the table. Quatre would have gone into shock at seeing it. It was the heart of the Zero interface. 

He then turned to the computer on the table. A flip of a switch activated the unit, the light from the monitor illuminating a sharply angled face with cold blue eyes. A mop of shaggy brown hair hung in unruly locks, almost as if it was defiant of any and all attempts to tame its lengths. Fingers suited to piloting the most sophisticated mobile suits in existence with the same ease most people breathed tapped out commands into the console. Within moments surveillance equipment set between the hulking shadows behind the operator came to life. 

Images cleared as Heero turned about to take in the visual knowledge displayed thereon. Quatre was back in the colonies, directing the rebuilding efforts through his deceased father's company. There was Trowa, back in the circus doing his high-wire acts with Catherine. Duo and Hilde were apparently starting a salvage yard together, and Wufei was getting started with the Preventers under the tutelage of Sally Po. Lady Une was working hard, directing the movements of the Preventers, and making sure that all fires were being put out before they even started. Zechs and Noin were on their way to complete a joint mission, obviously the first of many. One screen was, however, dark and silent. Heero deactivated his surveillance units and got onto his motorcycle.

After nearly three days of travel, he stood high in the balconies above the hall where Relena was making a speech to the world. He'd have to let Zechs know how easy it had been to penetrate the security and make it to this position. As the speech wound to a close, Heero left the building and started the long trek back to his cave. Once there, he activated the screens again. For a long moment he gazed into the blackness on the single blank monitor. Then he turned it on. Relena's image immediately began to take shape. Heero nodded.

"Mission progressing." Without another word, the young pilot turned to the hulking forms that were keeping him company. He had a lot of work to do.

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13 August, A.C. 197 The Peacecraft Mansion

"Relena! Where are you?" Relena jerked up from her paperwork in surprise. 

"Noin?" she muttered. "I'm in my room!" she hollered out the door. She was just turning back to her papers when Noin blasted in.

"Relena!" Noin squealed, her face glowing with happiness. Relena frowned, puzzled at Noin's behavior. For several moments she waited as Noin babbled, obviously unable to frame coherent thought. With a sigh of resignation, the Vice-Foreign Minister lightly slapped her friend in the face. Noin froze and glared at Relena. 

"Now that you're a little less excited," Relena said with an amused gleam in her eyes, "What brings you to my rooms in such high spirits?" 

The anger vanished instantly from Noin's face as a gamine look of pure glee flooded her eyes. She held up her left hand. Relena's confusion faded to realization as she took in the beautifully crafted diamond ring on her best friend's hand. 

Zechs, a little shell-shocked from the way his fiancée had just taken off, was attracted anew when he heard the matching squeals of delight and excited chatter coming from his sister's room. Peeking in through the door, he saw that Noin was already giving Relena all the nitty-gritty details about how he had proposed. Zechs' joy that his proposal had been accepted faded somewhat as he saw the faint shadow that eclipsed Relena's obvious joy for her sister-in-law-to-be. He withdrew from the doorway, cursing Heero Yuy roundly for just disappearing. Zechs sighed, and then turned his steps to his offices. He would need to draw up a guest list.

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June, A.C. 197 through March, A.C. 198

It was dark. 

The darkness was the first thing he was able to acknowledge. Fast on the heels of that knowledge came others: it was cold. The air smelled of antiseptics and sterile dressings. He could hear a faint beeping, presumably from a heart monitor.

He was barely aware of the passage of time at first; the only thing he knew for sure was that he would swim into consciousness hazily, and then fade right back out. But even as he struggled to regain his ability to stay conscious, he began to form his plan. It slowly took shape. 

The Gundams had been made to subjugate the Earth, and allow the colonies to rise to their rightful place as the leaders of the human race. But the Gundam pilots had been corrupted. Relena Dorlian Peacecraft had seduced the pilots with her wiles, and drawn them away from the path. And once they had turned from the path they became the enemies of the colonies. They had stopped the ascension of the Barton Family to its rightful place at the head of the government. A sickly cough ripped from his throat as he thought of that betrayal. 

And then, of course, was the worst part of it all. He had very nearly died the day he had been shot in the back by one of his own. It had been a near thing. But now, he was beginning to regain his strength. Soon, he would begin work on a new army. He smiled in the darkness of his room. It had taken a long time for him to realize what had been reported concerning his fate. And now, no one would suspect him of being behind what he would do. He _was_ dead, after all. His chuckle disintegrated to a coughing fit. Rage flared through him. He would recover! And then the pilots and those that they loved would pay.

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5 July, A.C. 198

It had been nearly a year since Noin had busted into her room and the news of the incipient marriage of Lucrezia Noin and Milliardo Peacecraft had exploded through the their network of friends. The marriage would be a largely private affair, just the bride, the groom, the maid of honor, five best men and five bride's maids. It had taken a lot of fast-talking, but Relena had managed to bring Pagan around. Now he marched down the aisle with Lady Une, followed by Quatre with Dorothy, Trowa with Catherine, Duo with Hilde, and Wufei with Sally. The hardest part for Relena as she watched her brother and her friend marry, was that she was certain that she would never stand there and say "I do" to the one she loved. Tears flowed freely from her eyes, and though she tried desperately to hide the reason for her tears, she knew that she wasn't fooling any that would take a close look at the maid of honor. She ducked her head slightly and avoided the eyes of her friends. The pain was too visible.

After the ceremony, and the tossing of the bouquet (Dorothy caught it), and the garter (Quatre, after knocking Duo on his butt), they all gathered for dinner in the mansion. Multiple conversations ruled the evening, but Relena couldn't bring herself to join in. She listened to most of what was said, but she was unable to join the banter. 

After dinner, she went for a walk in the gardens behind the mansion. She stopped every so often and touched the flowers. Her wanderings eventually led her to a large fountain near the center of the gardens. She took a seat on the rim and reflected on all the tales of people tossing something into a fountain or well and making a wish, which of course later came true. She reached up into her hair and pulled out a golden barrette. Relena took a close look at it. Two pearls framed a delicate jade butterfly design. With a deep breath and a sudden fling of her arm the tiny piece of jewelry spun into the fountain. A small splash was all that marked the event as the clip sank to the bottom. 

"Please, bring him back to me," she whispered. A tear flowed from her eye and was hastily brushed away as she stood and began to return to the mansion. 

Her footsteps faded into the night, leaving the fountain area silent. Then a slender form moved from the trees that ringed the area. Blue eyes glowed, reflecting the shifting moonbeams thrown out by the rippling water. For a long moment it simply stood and looked at the golden glint that marked the resting-place of the barrette. Moments later, the area was empty once more, and the discarded hair clip was gone.

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December, A.C. 198

The man staggered to his feet once more, spurred on by the need to regain his previous physical prowess. At last, exhausted from the strenuous therapy, he returned to his bed. He had barely lain back when there was a knock at the door. At his command, the door opened and his second in command entered. 

"Sir, we have located sizable deposits of neo-titanium on the moon." The man's voice was excited and slightly rushed. The first man smiled. 

"How comes the factory to make it into gundanium?" he rasped. He silently cursed his damaged vocal chords; he'd once been a great orator. He was dragged back to the present however, at his subordinate's response.

"We should have it working and turning out gundanium in about a month, sir. Our numbers grow a little each day and the reports from the scientists on Project Hercules say they have a seventeen percent success rate." After a brief hesitation, he continued, "And they say on Project _Grendel_ that they have achieved a success rate of nearly twenty-three percent."

The first man smiled. Project Hercules would give him the perfect soldiers. The soldiers would be loyal, because they had no thought to be _dis_loyal. The perfect soldiers, they would be. And no prissy whore from the Earth would be able to convert them with her wiles! And Project _Grendel_…the man shivered with evil glee. One on one, they were weak units at best. But as a group, no, a _unit_, ah! That was a far different matter. No one could stop the _Grendels_! After dismissing the aide, he leaned back and began to relax. _I think I'll take a new name, _he thought. _After all, I was dead, but now I'm alive. I'll call myself…Lazarus. _With a rusty laugh, he settled back to get some rest. He needed to regain all that he had lost.

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23 December, A.C. 198

Snow fell delicately from the sky, wreathing the Mansion in a shawl of purest white. Inside, Pagan led Relena through the steps to finish the Christmas tree that they had bought. From her place on the couch, Noin called comments and advice. 

Relena, finally exasperated by all the bossing, turned around and fixed her sister-in-law with a fierce glare. "Do you want to do this?" Relena's tone was positively frigid. 

Noin giggled. "I don't think your brother would approve!" Her dancing eyes, however, told Relena all she needed to know. The sandy-haired Minister to the world jumped off her stool with a grin and raced over to where Noin sat. Grabbing her hands, Relena helped Noin to her feet. Once erect, Noin placed one hand at the small of her back and waddled over to the ornament box. Picking a delicate angel figure, she placed it on the tree. Her hand then settled on the swell of her stomach, caressing the bulge formed by her child. Relena came and stood behind her friend. A wicked smile crept over her face. 

"Now," began Relena, "whose idea was it to start sharing bedrooms several months before the wedding?" Noin growled at her friend, but her heart wasn't in it. 

"It was a mutual decision, Relena," Noin said quietly. "We knew we loved each other and we decided not to wait." 

"If you had, though," Relena shot back, the wicked gleam in her eyes growing, "you wouldn't be barefoot and pregnant in the middle of winter!" Even as she finished the sentence, Relena was ducking the playful swat being thrown at her face. Noin came about, following her hand, only to lay eyes on Relena. Giggles were threatening to escape Relena's mouth and her body was racked with silent laughter. Noin tried to maintain an air of dignified anger, but lost to the laughter that bubbled up to her own lips. In short order, the two women were curled up on the couch, gossiping about the child and the friends they were inviting over. Pagan smiled faintly and turned back to his labor, content to serve the people that he loved as though they were his own children. 

The next day saw the first of the guests arriving. Quatre and Dorothy, followed swiftly by Trowa and Catherine, were the first to arrive. A sparkling diamond on Catherine's hand, however, announced loudly that the quiet life Trowa might have enjoyed up to that point was about to end. His fiancée's natural boisterousness would compensate for all of his reticence. With the arrival of Duo and Hilde in the afternoon, and Wufei and Sally later that evening, the friends were all assembled. Playful banter swept the dining room table as the Christmas Eve feast was devoured. Bags of presents found their way under the tree as tired people started off to bed. Relena was the last to make the ascent to the upper level where the rooms were. She stopped, overlooking the large hall where the tree reigned in solitary splendor. A tear trickled from her eye. The one thing she wanted to happen wasn't going to, no matter how much she cried over it. Wiping the tear from her face, she turned down the hall and vanished into the wing that housed her suite.

In a distant cave, the monitors shed their soft light into the darkness. Silence held reign in the cave, only the muffled chirps of bats breaking the hushed air.

Night had fallen on the world. In the security rooms of the Mansion, a lone guard peered anxiously at the screen showing the main room. He knew he had seen something, but his companion on duty had laughed and went off to take a quick leak. Hearing the door to the lavatory creak open, the fading echo of the toilet flushing emerging with the older guard, the younger guard excused himself and took a flashlight and went to check it out. Arriving in the main hall, he carefully surveyed the room. He had almost convinced himself that he really had just been seeing things when a faint chill raced up his spine. 

It was a draft coming from one of the windows. The guard pulled out his nightstick, a highly efficient design with the handle at a right angle to the bar. Shining his light before him, he advanced to the window. Barely visible in the thick rug were wet footprints. Too scared to even think about pressing the panic button on his wrist, the guard followed the footprints. They led rapidly to the tree room. The guard froze with shock as he saw a dark figure crouched over the heap of presents. 

"Freeze!" he yelled as he leapt forward, intent on smashing this person flat. He spun the stick expertly, remembering with detachment that the doubling the speed of an object increased its impact force by a factor of four. The guard lashed out with the long barrel of the weapon, unerringly aiming for the intruder's masked face. The impact shock that rocketed up the guard's arm stunned him. In numb disbelief the guard stared at the man; he'd just effortlessly _caught _a stick moving with enough force to cave in someone's skull with his bare hand. Unable to do more than stand as still as a pole-axed ox, he made no protest when his opponent plucked the stick from his hands and hit him in the head. Blackness swallowed all the light and the guard pitched forward, dead to the world. 

The most bitter and disgusting thing the young guard had ever smelled brought him back to waking. With a start, he jerked bolt upright, forgetting his head injury. His last meal threatened to relocate, and so he didn't hear the question being fired at him for a few moments. After winning (temporarily) the battle with his stomach, he lifted his eyes to answer the questions of his superior. But before he could say a single word, his tongue froze to the roof of his mouth. Standing there was not only a good half of the guards of the Mansion, but the Peacecrafts and their guests. Seeing fear in his eyes, the Vice-Foreign Minister knelt down beside him and smiled gently. 

She held out her hand and said, "I'm Relena. What's your name?"

Barely aware that he was shaking her hand, the guard replied, "I'm Tom Wolffe, Foreign Minister."

She shook her head. "Just call me Relena. Now, Tom, what did you see?"

Her eyes were oddly intent, thought Tom. "There was a person here, Miss Relena. A man, about five-ten, medium build." At those words, Tom noticed that he now had the undivided attention of all of Relena's guests and Relena herself. "I tried to stop him but he knocked me out. The next thing I know I'm waking up here, with all of you standing around."

"Madame Foreign Minister!" interrupted a voice. Relena turned, obviously irritated. There stood the Captain of the guard. "We have conducted a thorough search of the grounds and found no traces of an intruder. Bomb sweeps are negative, and no bugging devices were found in or about the Mansion." He saluted as soon as he was finished. 

"Thank you, Captain. You and your men are dismissed." Relena then turned back to Tom. "Tell me everything that happened when you found the man in this room."

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25 December, A.C. 198

"So that's all he knows," mused Quatre. The youthful president of a major manufacturing company looked, oddly enough, angry.

The friends were gathered in the dining room of the Mansion. They had spent the rest of their sleepless night verifying what the guards had already reported. The only difference was that they had a good idea who it had been to visit the Mansion that night.

"I checked the security films to see if they caught anything," said Wufei. "The screen was flickering in and out the whole time, but the ability of our visitor was such that the guard would have been dead if that was the goal."

Relena nodded once, not replying. Her gaze turned to Duo. The braided ex-pilot squirmed slightly under her penetrating gaze. "I found a faint tire impression near the south wall. It seems to have been made by a motorcycle of some sort."

"Well," said Zechs, obviously trying to change the subject, "why don't we let this lie until we've opened our presents and had some breakfast? I know I'm famished after this past night." The others at the table expressed agreement in various ways, and they began to get up and gingerly step out. Relena's expression was positively frosty as she glared at her brother. Accurately reading the unspoken message there, the elder Peacecraft stayed behind as everyone else slipped out the door. Noin gave her husband a sad look, having a good idea who the subject of this little talk would be.

Once they were alone, Zechs beat Relena to the punch. "Yes, it probably was him," he said in a quiet voice. He looked at his sister, and felt anger once more that she was going through this all because of some louse who didn't have the decency to even write. 

"Why didn't he stay?" she whispered as her head fell forward onto her folded arms. Muffled sobs emerged from the mound of hair that had fallen in an obscuring wave over her arms. Zechs stood up and went to his sister, holding her in his arms as she cried. 

For all that he hated Heero Yuy for leaving his baby sister, Zechs found himself wishing for one brief moment that the cold pilot would return and give Relena the comfort that she needed.

In the cave far from the Mansion, the monitors showed the scene to Heero. After several moments, he touched the controls, deactivating that monitor. He then turned to the shadows behind him. Were there had been two hulking forms barely visible, there was now only one form. 

"Soon," he whispered. "Soon we will be able to fulfill our mission objectives."

Later that day, Relena walked up to her room, her eyes distracted. She reflected that she'd been fortunate enough to sit near the tree earlier. When she'd seen the small box with her name on it, she'd just picked it up and set it by her side. Relena had almost forgotten all about it when she'd shifted, and felt it pinch her thigh. She'd picked it up and broke the string binding the wrapping on. Inside was a necklace. The medallion had an engraved dove mounted on the ancient symbol of peace superimposed over the earth. Relena had known whom it was from, and quietly placed it in her pocket. 

Once in her room, she walked over to the mirror. She opened the box and slipped the golden chain around her neck. After several moments of intense thought, she pulled up her collar and slipped the medallion inside her clothing. It settled down next to her heart. She smiled, the pain fading somewhat. He hadn't forgotten her. 

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23 February, A.C. 201

Lazarus leaned back in his chair. A careful examination of his body showed that it was in the peak of health. He smiled. It had taken nearly four years to repair all the damage done, but now he was back and ready to take action. He looked over the reports on his desk. The gundanium plant had started out small as a necessity. Time and care had increased production so that now nearly thirty tons were made every month. The army had swelled to nearly five thousand _Grendel_ units. The _Hercules_ units, while far more powerful, numbered only four hundred. They were so much harder to make, reflected Lazarus. 

On Earth, at Preventer HQ, Wufei blasted through the doors to Lady Une's office, his deceivingly delicate Oriental features suffused with rage.

"You knew about this and didn't tell us?" he roared, clearly a half second away from tearing Lady Une into pieces. Lady Une looked over his shoulder and saw Sally Po push her way past confused onlookers. Sally entered the room and closed the door. Lady Une touched a button on her desk, activating white noise generators and various other scrambling devices scattered all about the office. 

"Please sit, Wufei," said Lady Une, motioning to a seat across the desk from her. 

"I WILL NOT SIT…"

"CHANG WUFEI YOU WILL SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW OR I WILL SHOOT YOU WERE YOU STAND!" roared Lady Une in tones that would cow the unshakable Heero Yuy as she rocketed to her feet. Wufei found himself sitting immediately. Lady Une settled back into her seat, motioning for Sally to sit as well. Once all three were sitting down, she turned her gaze to Wufei. "Now," she said in a very calm, reasonable tone, "I knew about what, exactly?"

"Neo-Oz," spat Wufei, as though the word left an ugly taste in his mouth. 

Lady Une looked at Sally. "You told?" Her voice was about as warm as a liquid nitrogen bath. Sally shrugged and said nothing. Lady Une sighed and turned back to Wufei. "We only received actual confirmation of the Neo-Oz organization two weeks ago. Until then it was unfounded rumor. Now we have dispatched agents to try to determine the actual strength of Neo-Oz. I don't want another War of 195." Lady Une's voice became very quiet. "There was enough death and destruction to last three lifetimes then." 

Wufei leaned forward and steepled his fingers. Leveling a very pointed gaze at his commanding officer, and in a voice loaded with venom, he asked, "Are you aware of the current situations of all of our little group?"

Lady Une looked sad. "Zechs and Noin are expecting a second child to join their son Peter in the next three months. Trowa and Catherine's daughter, Michelle, is two months old. Quatre and Dorothy have been married for six months, but there is no word on whether or not Mrs. Winner is pregnant. Duo and Hilde will be married this summer. Relena is now the Foreign Minister to the entire world and all the colonies. Heero's whereabouts remain the greatest mystery since man first wondered how the pyramids were built. I am obviously still here." The Commander of the Preventers smiled thinly. "And the two of you continue to drive up Trowa's betting pool on when you'll finally break down and ask Sally to marry you. It had reached nearly nine thousand last I heard." Her voice had become almost light-hearted there at the end. Soberness took over as she continued, all traces of amusement fading. "Did I miss anything?" she asked.

Wufei sighed and slouched back in his chair to the disbelieving gazes of the two women present. "No," he growled. "You didn't miss anything." He stood and began to pace. "So what all do we do know and who do we tell?"

In the cave, Heero tapped diligently away at his computer. He'd finally managed to break into Neo-Oz's mainframes. Detailed schematics and diagrams flashed across the screen as he sifted through the data to find what he sought. 

_"Access denied," _said the computer suddenly. Heero frowned. The data surrounding the leader of this new organization was heavily guarded. Too heavily guarded for Heero's peace of mind. The security locks on the Hercules and Grendel projects were less sophisticated. His face twisted into what would have been called insane determination in any other person, but when applied to Heero was his ordinary look. He would find out who this person was. In the darkness behind him loomed an enormous form. Two spots of faint green light from far above were all that split the encompassing gloom around the shadow. 

******************************************************************************

12 November, A.C. 201

"So that's why we've been having such trouble pinning down their HQ," snarled Sally. "They're hiding out on Mars!"

Lady Une's office in Preventer HQ was rather full at the moment. The four Gundam pilots and Zechs were all staring at the main screen. There it showed several colonies highlighted in red. 

"These colonies," said Lady Une in a quiet voice, "have all been confirmed as having recruitment centers. We've tried to get some of our own people in, but so far we haven't been having much luck. We lose contact with our people and their contacts are found dead a short time later."

That news brought a frown to Zechs' face. "Killed?" he asked.

Sally shook her head. "They all committed suicide. Their blood tests free of any chemicals except the 'final friend' that they were equipped with."

Quatre stood, his gentle face lined with anxiety. "What are we going to do?" he whispered. He walked to the window and stared out, deep in thought, for several moments. "We have families now. Zechs and his wife have two kids, Trowa and Catherine's daughter turns a year old in a month, Dorothy found out she's pregnant just a week ago, Duo and Hilde are newlywed, even Wufei is starting to lean in the way of getting a family. We don't have the Gundams -" he continued, turning to face his friends. After several moments, he added with a very hesitant tone, "- and the latest rumor is that gundanium is being manufactured out in the colonies."

That little bit of news had put the conversation into a whole new light, reflected Zechs later that night. Common agreement had been that the wives were not to know. Zechs snorted briefly at _that_ thought. Sally did not yet qualify as a 'wife,' but given Wufei's lack of reaction to Quatre's subtle dig, it was a definite likelihood. Zechs knew that he, Trowa, Quatre, and Duo all faced the hardest task in their lives to date: keeping the women they loved from realizing that there was something seriously wrong. He forced his mind back to the conversation earlier. No course of action had been decided upon, but that didn't mean that there weren't plans swirling in the minds of those men who had once been the most feared soldiers in existence. Zechs stood silent for several long moments on the stairs, looking down to the main room where his wife and sister were playing with his children. Sealing the gloomy thoughts of the Neo-Oz group in the back of his mind, he focused on the faces of his children and went down to be 'dada!"

Quatre slammed his fist into the wall in frustration, then bit back the curse that threatened to blister the air. His wife had gone to visit a friend, and wasn't due back for another two days. A plan solidified in his mind. He knew what he was going to do, and it was a very good thing that Dorothy wasn't here to see it. As he began preparations, his conscience whispered to him that he didn't trust his wife to help him on this one. _Trust has nothing to do with it_, Quatre retorted. _I don't want her implicated in this if it comes to light. And then there's the other reason. Now shut up!_

In the cave, Heero sat back, his face a mask of stone, his mind a whirlwind of confused thoughts, all swirling around a single sentence: He's alive. Heero couldn't believe it, but there it was. Lazarus' face. Heero turned to the monitors he had been steadily adding to over the last several years. Trowa and Duo were doing quite well and pretending nothing was wrong, but their wives were obviously suspicious of the shadowed eyes that occasionally turned outwards. Zechs was doing the best job by playing with his children. But Quatre…Quatre didn't have to try to hide it at all at the moment. Heero focused in on the former pilot of _Sandrock_. What was he up to? After several hours, Heero actually smiled faintly. _The guy's got the right idea_, he thought. _Good_.

******************************************************************************

25 December, A.C. 201

The Mansion was once more alive with lights and life, as the friends gathered to celebrate the season. Their 'family,' already large and well spread out, had been increased since last Christmas. The newest addition was claiming a lot of attention, in between being cute and cuddly and devilishly feisty. One by one, everyone got to hold Alexandra Peacecraft. The little opportunist had them all eating out of her hand, and if she weren't only seven months old, Wufei would have thought she was completely aware of it and milking it for all she was worth. Fortunately, the other two toddlers were tolerant of the new baby. 

Laughter rang through the halls, bringing a smile to Pagan's face. A faint twinge in his knee as he knelt to pick up a fallen spoon from the floor reminded the old servant that his health was beginning to decline. With a faint sigh, he turned to take the dirty utensil to the kitchen. He only prayed that he would be able to see his favorite charge, Miss Relena, find the happiness that he saw in the eyes of the families that came over every Christmas. 

The main hall was already awash with ripped wrapping paper from the mountain of presents that had found their way to the tree. At present, the attention was focused on young Peter, Zechs' and Noin's oldest boy, who was struggling manfully to unwrap his present. With all the commotion going on, no one noticed that Sally had picked up a medium-sized box from under the tree. 

Peering at the tag, she saw with surprise that it was for her, but that there was no name in the "From:" space. Shaking her head at her friends, who she was sure had set this one up, she ripped off the wrapping and pulled out…another box? With a growl of frustration that caught Trowa's ears, she began unwrapping the second box. With a simple touch, the reticent pilot let his wife know what was happening. As Sally penetrated to second box to reveal a third, more eyes found their way to her. By the time she was furiously ripping into the fourth box, all eyes were on her, wondering who would go to all the trouble of so many boxes. The fourth box held a bunch of packing peanuts, which were scattered all over as she dug down. A look of puzzlement came over her face as she pulled her hand out. A black velvet box that fit easily into the palm of her hand was revealed. Her breath caught in her throat. Confusion and stunned amazement flitted through the minds of her observers as she opened the box. 

At the rainbow flash from within, confusion and amazement turned to amusement and chagrin. The engagement ring was a beautiful thing; delicate golden leaves surmounted by a trio of diamonds. Her eyes, filled with wonder and threatening to tear, focused on Wufei. He fidgeted briefly, and then demanded, "Well?"

Laughter rang loud and clear from Duo as Sally shot into his arms and claimed a passionate kiss that left Wufei looking rather breathless. Wiggling into a comfortable seat on his lap, she placed the ring on her finger and whispered something into his ear. He nodded, desperately trying to force the blush back down away from his face. They kissed again, and then she leaned back and rested her head on his shoulder.

"So typically Wufei!" crowed Duo. His laughing suddenly cut off as a look of dismay flooded his face. "I lost! I bet for three weeks from now!" With a disappointed groan, the braided pilot sank back into his chair. 

"Poor, poor God of Death!" laughed Hilde, nudging her husband in the side. "Who did win, Trowa?"

Trowa smiled faintly and pointed his finger at Relena. "She did."

"Hey!" yelled Zechs in a wounded tone. "I bet for this week!"

"She bet for this day, specifically," Trowa retorted. "So there!"

More laughter and fun filled the day as the old friends enjoyed their holiday. But as the sun descended, Duo noticed that Relena was becoming rather withdrawn. After nudging Hilde, he asked her to watch their friend the rest of the evening. That night as they entered their room, he looked at his wife, the question burning in his eyes. Hilde nodded.

"She definitely needs a vacation, Duo," she said as she undressed. He sighed, and took off his own clothes. Naked, they climbed into bed. She settled herself into the crook of his right arm, her head pillowed on his chest, her body against his side. "She's tired and needs to get away from all this "Foreign Minister to the Masses" garbage," she added.

"Yes," Duo agreed. "That's what I thought I saw."

After several long moments of silence, a thought occurred to Hilde. "Do you know where Heero is?" When Duo made no reply, she levered herself up to look into his eyes. She couldn't, though, because he was looking away. Duo yipped in pain as she belted him in the stomach. "You've known where he was this whole time and said nothing!" she snarled. "I ought to make you sleep on the couch for the rest of your very short life!"

Duo grabbed her hands and pinned her to the bed underneath him before she could let fly another punch. "I don't know where he is!" he shot back. She stopped struggling; the disbelief so clear on her face that Duo sighed. "Please listen to me, Hilde."

"I'm listening," she snarled, infuriated that the man she loved had done nothing to help one of her best friends.

"I have a number that he gave me back in 195," he said, desperately. "I can call it and leave a message that I need to talk to him and he'll get back to me in the next day or so." His voice hardened. "And I've been blasting him for leaving Relena like that every time I talk to him. He just hangs up and calls back a few minutes later and says that if I'm done cussing him out we can talk, otherwise he'll just call tomorrow!"

As he spoke, Hilde watched his eyes carefully. The pain she saw in his eyes when he was telling her Heero's response to his diatribe was too real to make it one of the fancy excuses Duo was famous for. She sighed, and relaxed into his grip. Duo rolled off and sat up in bed. The shifting of the covers and the rustle of fabric told him that she was also sitting up. Moments later she was hugging him from behind. "I'm sorry," she whispered, a tear rolling off her cheek onto his shoulder. He turned in her arms and held her tight. 

"It's ok, my love," he whispered. The two lay back and were still for a long while, seeking comfort in the embrace of the one they loved. 

******************************************************************************

The next day, Duo and Hilde went hunting for Zechs. They eventually found him in the arboretum with his wife and children, relaxing under the peaceful environment therein. As they approached, Hilde caught Noin's eye. The two friends exchanged a wordless conversation, and then Noin popped to her feet. 

"Huh?" said Zechs rather intelligently as his wife gathered up Alexandra and took little Peter's hand. The three walked away, Hilde in tow, leaving Duo and Zechs alone under the tree. The current patriarch of the Peacecraft line glared up at the former Gundam pilot who remained towering over him. "Sit down, Duo," said Zechs in a soft voice.

After comfortably seating himself, Duo was uncharacteristically silent for several long minutes. Zechs felt his patience slipping away. Duo was the loudest, most motor-mouthed of all the pilots. For him to be silent this long…Hades must be an ice rink. If this braided _baka_ didn't start talking…

"I see that we've been beaten to the punch," a quiet voice said from behind the two men. They turned to see Wufei and Trowa standing there. After they were also seated, the four men spent several moments in a rather one-sided staring contest. Zechs struggled to resist hunching his shoulders defensively under the weight of those stares. 

"So where's Quatre?" he asked, breaking the silence. 

"He and Dorothy are taking Relena to the city to do some shopping, to help her get her mind off of work," answered Trowa. 

"And that's what we want to talk to you about," added Wufei.

As if they had timed this to the second, Duo picked up the thread of the conversation. "Relena is being emotionally crushed under the weight of her position."

Trowa: "She won't eat right and has trouble sleeping."

Wufei: "She never takes personal time off to get away from the job."

Duo: "She never calls to chat with our wives regularly like she used to."

For the longest three minutes of Zechs' life, the three men piled fact after fact on him. Finally, unable to take any more, he broke in. 

"So you're saying Relena needs a vacation?" Before they could even nod, he jumped to his feet and snarled, "I've been trying to get her to take one for the last ten months at least!" 

"Ok," said Duo heavily after a few moments, "you know about it and you've been trying to fix it."

"How can we help?" asked Wufei.

Zechs looked at the taciturn pilot in shock. "Are you sure you're Chang Wufei?" he asked suspiciously. Duo laughed, and Trowa smiled his quiet smile. Wufei merely got irritated, and it showed. "Yes," said Zechs. "You're for real." 

"So how can we help Relena?" asked Trowa.

******************************************************************************

2 February, A.C. 202

"A vacation?" Relena asked in confusion.

Zechs nodded. "The itinerary is complete. You have the next month to yourself." It had taken nearly that long to get this all set up, he mused. After all, it wasn't every day that you had to coordinate security for a vacation of this duration across this much space!

"But…" she began to protest when Zechs cut her off.

"You are not to call the office to offer advice on any diplomatic issues brought before the Earth Sphere United Nations. We encourage you to renew communication with certain friends who really want to hear from you…" Here Relena blushed at the reminder that she hadn't been talking with all of their "family" on a regular basis. "…but not to watch too much news about what is happening in the world and in space."

"In short, a vacation," growled Relena. "Who put you up to this, big brother?" Zechs looked uncomfortable for a few moments, and when he still didn't respond, she continued. "You first started hinting months back that I should take a weekend off every now and again. The last month or so your hints have been about as subtle as a ten-pound sledgehammer in the face. But you'd never do _this._ So who did?" she asked again, her tone leaving no doubts in the mind of her brother that she would shortly begin to offer threats. 

"Whom shall I name first?" he asked, looking her right in the eyes. When she looked startled at that, he continued. "Let's see, there was Trowa, and Catherine, Wufei, Sally, Duo, Hilde – don't forget Quatre and Dorothy – Noin, Lady Une, Mariemaia…do I need to continue?"

"Mariemaia?" muttered Relena in surprise, trying to recall the last time she had seen the girl. It had been at an ESUN Thanksgiving dinner several years back. "Time flies," she whispered.

"What was that, little sister?" asked Zechs. When she waved off the comment as nothing, he resumed his little spiel. "So they all ganged up with – uh – _on _me and we set this up." Relena carefully hid a smile. Her brother was a soldier, not a diplomat, for all he was a Peacecraft. And every time she wondered if he would ever try to switch careers, he'd make a slip of the tongue that would have made him the laughingstock of politicians everywhere. 

She glanced at him through hooded lashes and wondered if she would be able to wheedle her way out of this one. But his eyes were as hard as gundanium, and she realized that this time, she had no choice.

"Well?" demanded Noin that night as Zechs came in to go to bed. Her husband, however, was silent as he stripped down and reached for the covers. "Uh-uh, lover-boy," she growled, pinning the covers to the bed. "You were supposed to get Relena to agree to that vacation. Start talking or it's off to the couch with you."

Zechs sighed, obviously weary. "She leaves tomorrow afternoon. The pilots all agreed to keep discreet eyes out when she swings by their homes and the security force is being rotated like mad to keep her from seeing the same faces in all the stops she makes on this vacation we cooked up." Pacified, Noin let her husband slip into the bed. He lay back on the pillows with another exhausted sigh.

"She put up that much of a fight, huh?" she asked sympathetically. 

"You have no idea," snarled Zechs. "Her head's as hard as gundanium alloy and she's as stubborn as a thousand mules."

Noin smiled slyly and cuddled up to his side. "I guess you're all worn out, then."

Zechs glared at her for a moment, then grabbed her and rolled himself on top. "I'll show you what it means to be worn out!" he growled playfully. Noin laughed and kissed her husband.

******************************************************************************

15 February, A.C. 202

Relena leaned back in her seat, watching the stars sweep by as the shuttle made its final turn to the colony where Duo and Hilde were living. So far her vacation had been rather … relaxing, surprisingly enough. She hadn't expected to have as much fun as she was, and the knowledge that she didn't have to worry about all the petty problems of the world was truly liberating. 

Once the shuttle docked, she collected her bag and exited, turning towards the concourse where Hilde had promised to meet her. Her steps picked up in pace as she hurried off to greet her friend. 

Behind her, unnoticed, a man emerged from the shuttle and turned away, vanishing into the crowds. Moments later, he reappeared on the upper level and began shadowing Relena. Those he walked past moved out of his way with an almost surprised mien; it was as though they hadn't seen him until they were about to run into him. No one, however, stopped the man to demand an apology. His cold blue eyes drove them back as though they'd been stuck with cattle prods.

Down below, he saw Relena and Hilde enthusiastically greet each other, then move out into the colony. Descending swiftly to the lower level, he followed at a discreet distance.

"So tell me how things are back on earth!" barked Hilde peremptorily. "I need all the latest gossip that you know!" 

Relena laughed, reveling in the fact that her life, for a month at least, was uncomplicated. As the two friends settled in on the topics that fascinated them both their shadower settled into a booth not far from their seats in the restaurant.

******************************************************************************

27 February

Relena frowned, and tapped her chin thoughtfully. This man, Francis Michaels, was a real enigma. She'd met him at the hotel bar and they had chatted for a while. He had been obviously looking for a friend for the night, and while she wasn't interested at all, there had been something about him that had set off all her internal alarms. She'd got the same crawly feeling about him as she'd gotten around Heero those first few weeks whenever he was about to leave for a mission. As she studied the room before digging in, she silently thanked whoever had manipulated fate so that she had met and interacted with the pilots. Without their example, she would never have developed the hypersensitivity to hidden secrets in even the best-trained people.

The dresser contained no surprises, but the computer he'd stashed under the nightstand was truly revealing. And the security protocols were the best she'd ever seen. The computer kept asking for a password. She thought for a few more moments, and then typed "G-O-D." The male super-ego comes through again, she marveled as the computer's electronic guts were spilled out before her eyes. She read rapidly, first in curiosity, then puzzlement, which graduated straight to pure horror. She quickly tapped out a few commands and blessed Hilde silently for making sure that Relena had bought plenty of memory chips to store photos and travel journals. After copying everything to an empty chip, she turned off the computer and replaced it. 

Relena had done so well up to the point when she was leaving his rooms that she forgot to take a careful look up and down the hall as she left his room. A startled cry to her left brought her around. There stood Francis and a second man she'd never seen before. Recognition, however, blossomed in his eyes. "Relena Peacecraft," he snarled in fury. Francis looked surprised, and then shocked, once he realized who he'd been propositioning earlier. 

Relena didn't wait around for them to recover, however. She turned tail and ran as fast as she could. She slammed down the stairs several floors before bursting out into the dance hall on the fourth floor. She quickly threaded her way through the crowd, knowing she had to get to the Mansion with what she had learned. Even as she ran, she knew that she couldn't risk a straight communication. They'd be watching and would have her instantly. But if she could just make it to the shuttle bay … Her line of thought cut off as she saw that the second man had beaten her to the door she'd been planning to take. 

Stifling a curse, she looked around swiftly for another exit. But then the crowd surged and the creep disappeared. She dived through the door and raced through the halls for the exit. She had to get to earth!

In the dance hall, Francis and the Creep were standing just to the left of the door, out of sight behind some decorations. Once Relena had pushed her way out the door, they smiled at each other. But as they turned in unison to follow, hands grabbed their heads. The music and chatter in the room swallowed up the hollow _thunk_ as their heads smacked together. Their limp bodies were gently placed in a nearby booth. Cold blue eyes glimmered in the flashing lights of the dance hall. The man moved swiftly out the door on Relena's trail. He had to make sure that she made it safely to wherever she was going. 

Arriving at the shuttle port, she looked around for several long moments before spotting a private little yacht, obviously owned by some bigwig company president. Relena raced over to its slip and boarded it. After several tense moments of arguing with the pilot and a call earth-side to the Preventer HQ, the pilot locked the ship down for immediate departure. 

"Use all the speed you can squeeze out of this tin can," Relena barked at the pilot before disappearing aft to find a seat. 

In the cockpit, the pilot and copilot shared a quick look as they finished their pre-flight checks. "I don't want to know why," said the pilot in answer to the unspoken question in his co-pilot's eyes. "And neither do you," his said, his voice taking on a warning hint. The copilot nodded once and filed this little trip in the "never happened" file in his brain.

Hours later, Zechs entered the Command room of the Mansion, and watched anxiously as the shuttle came to a precarious halt on the runway just outside. Relena leaped down from the shuttle and ran for the door, holding something in her hands. She burst through the doors and nearly knocked her brother flat on the ground. 

"Call everyone!" she gasped. "We've got trouble!"

******************************************************************************

28 February

"How many tons?" whispered Hilde in shock. Relena could see that her dark-haired friend spoke for all gathered there.

"Nearly eight hundred tons of high-grade gundanium alloy will be on this freighter;" Relena said. "Its destination is the Neo-Oz base on Mars. They're building an army out of gundanium mobile suits."

The room was a little crowded, she thought as she settled back in her chair. Zechs and Noin were seated to her left, followed by Trowa and Catherine, then Wufei and Sally. Duo and Hilde sat to her right, with Quatre and Dorothy beyond them. Next to the Winners sat Lady Une, with Mariemaia standing behind her guardian. Mariemaia's face was very pale. Relena sympathized with the young woman. She'd tried to take over the world at the tender age of nine. Now she was going to be on the receiving end of what she's tried to dish out six years ago. But this time, thought Relena, they didn't even have the…

"…Gundams," said Quatre, breaking into her thoughts. 

"I'm sorry, Quatre," Relena said as she shook her head. "I wasn't listening. Could you repeat that?"

Quatre looked uncomfortable, but everyone's eyes were on him. "I said, we need to rebuild our Gundams if we're going to stop Neo-Oz." The flood of questions and remarks that began to flow forth dribbled off to nothing as he held up his hand for silence. "I have, for the past four months, been working secretly to rebuild _Sandrock _at my mansion."

Silence held the room for several long moments as this knowledge was digested. Relena looked around, noting that while the news of Neo-Oz itself had come as no surprise to the men, most of the wives had been kept in the dark. And they weren't too happy about it. But this news about _Sandrock_…Dorothy was the first to voice her anger.

"You didn't trust me to help you, did you?" Her voice practically dripped liquid nitrogen. Relena carefully concealed a wince. Quatre had probably decided against telling her for far different reasons. 

"I didn't tell _anyone_ that I was rebuilding _Sandrock_, Dorothy," Quatre shot back. "And I didn't tell you because I knew you'd want to be down there helping me. And you know that the doctor says you need to avoid strenuous activity." His voice, hard and cold at the first, had grown soft and even a little sad. Confusion reigned on the faces of the others, but Relena knew what made him sound so protective. Only she and the Winners themselves knew that Dorothy had miscarried twice since marrying Quatre. Both had come almost too early for Dorothy to know she was with child, and the doctor had warned them that it would be difficult indeed for the blonde woman to bear a child to full term.

"If we're going to have any chance at all of defeating Neo-Oz," broke in Wufei, "we _will_ need the Gundams." As the others all agreed they fell silent as one of the group, quiet until that moment, took the opportunity to speak.

It was Mariemaia. "After the war…" As the eyes of the group focused on her, she blushed and continued in an almost inaudible voice. "After the war I started that Christmas was over, Lady Une and I found just over a dozen _Serpent_ suits that hadn't been launched because of equipment malfunctions. They're being kept in a secure facility at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea at this moment."

As attention shifted to Lady Une, the former Oz colonel nodded once. "They've been repaired and kept out of sight just in case something like this happened." She scowled at the table. "I was not expecting an organization of this magnitude to surface. The suits we have stored will not be able to win this battle, not even if we could put the best pilots in them."

When the meeting was over, Relena went to walk in the garden. The peaceful area still leached away the fear and sorrow that she always carried. As she headed for the fountain, she heard the faint roar of the shuttle's engines. Wufei and Sally were already on their way to intercept the shipment of gundanium. She couldn't hear the engine roars of the trucks that Quatre, Trowa, and Duo were using to collect the destroyed Gundams, but they were also pulling out.

She sat on the edge of the fountain and rested for several minutes. Gradually she turned, taking in all the lush scenery that had been arranged around the fountain. Her eyes slowly came back to gaze into the depths of the fountain. She stiffened suddenly as shock raced through her entire body. She stood slowly, and realized that she had never looked there since Zechs's wedding. The barrette was gone.

Pagan turned the corner and was almost knocked flat on his back as Relena ran down the hall. He gasped in surprise, and then followed at a slower pace, calling out her name. 

Relena arrived at the doors of the security room and blasted through. Her arrival sent all the guards into a flurry of activity, desperately trying to look busy. She focused in immediately on the secretary of the archives. By the time Pagan arrived, Relena was seated before a screen. To her side, the secretary typed furious commands into the main computer banks. Moments later, the screen came to life. 

Reflexively, the old servant glanced at the date and time, and then turned back in surprise. July 5th, 198? Why in the world would Relena be looking at security films that were nearly four years old? The question resolved itself mere moments later, as he saw Relena enter the area shown on the screen. It was the fountain in the gardens. In mute silence, he watched as she plucked something from her hair and flung it into the waters. A small splash of water was all the marked its passing. She then turned and walked back off the screen. For several long moments, nothing happened. Then a shadow detached itself from the trees. Expertly the figure plucked the item from the fountain and vanished from view. Pagan sighed, making sure that he hushed the noise so that Miss Relena wouldn't hear him. He knew whom she had just seen. And he found himself wishing that she would find the love she sought.

******************************************************************************

2 March

Duo eased back on the carrier's controls, bringing it to a gentle stop in the field where three of the Gundams had been destroyed. Trowa and Quatre leaped off the carrier before it had even come to a complete stop and began collecting the pieces of _Heavyarms_ and _Deathscythe_. The sun beat down on them as they toiled, the sweat pouring from their bodies. As the sun was setting, they set up a small camp and ate dinner.

Duo lay awake for quite some time, reflecting on all the changes in his life since the end of the war. He was now married, and if Hilde's premonitions were accurate, he'd be a father by Christmas, easy. He'd gone from hardened killer to loving husband and maybe even father-to-be, and now he was about to turn back the clock. As sleep claimed him, his mind drifted back to the briefing that Lady Une had given concerning the new army.

_"These are the _Grendel_ units," she said. The screen showed a strange four-legged machine that was nearly as large as the old Specials. "Individually," continued Lady Une, "they are weak, easy targets for any fighter. Although fast, they are not very agile and have only machine gun weaponry. They are, however, nearly unstoppable when in groups."_

_"Why is that?" asked Trowa._

_Sally fielded that one. "The _Grendel_ units somehow form a basic hive mind, and when they attack as a group, it is with the full knowledge of exactly what every part is doing. They see the battle from the eyes of every unit in the hive, thus allowing them to coordinate their attacks to catch you the moment your back is to them."_

_As the pilots mulled over this deadly threat, Noin took the pointer and changed the image. Gasps of shock split the air as the statistics of the new mobile suit flashed on the screen._

_"The _Hercule_s unit." Noin's voice was icy cold. "Built as a basic clone of Gundam Zero-One, or _Wing,_ this unit has a decided advantage over the original design." The screen closed in on the rifle. "This rifle has heat shunts included that allow it to cool in less than ten seconds, and a self-replenishing power cell."_

_Quatre scowled. "You're saying that this _Hercules _unit can fire four times every minute from that buster rifle?"_

_"Exactly right, Quatre," answered Lady Une._

As Duo crawled out of his warm bed the next morning, he remembered the horror they had all felt as they realized the destructive potential of just one of these _Hercules _units. And Lady Une's reports seemed to indicate a force of near five hundred of those monstrous creations. And the _Grendel _units reportedly numbered in the thousands.

When the sun rose the next morning, they quickly ate a filling meal and got back to work. By midday, they had all the pieces they could find. Re-boarding the transports, they set off for the secluded valley where _Shenlong _had self-detonated.

******************************************************************************

7 March

The trucks pulled into the hanger that had housed the Gundams during the War of 195. As the three pilots who had left days ago exited, Wufei and Sally came up. The shadowy mobile suit slots were no longer empty. Fourteen _Serpents_ were in the bay, along with the forming skeleton of _Sandrock. _As the pilots unloaded the shattered Gundams, Sally returned to the observation room. There, Relena and Lady Une were talking quietly with Noin and Zechs. Once they saw Sally, however, they broke off their discussion.

"The guys are back. They've recovered _Shenlong_, _Heavyarms_ and _Deathscythe_," she reported. 

"What about _Wing Zero_?" asked Zechs. "Didn't it crash near the Presidential Mansion?"

Sally frowned, then turned to head back to the bay where the pilots were separating the pieces of the Gundams. Behind her came Zechs and the others. Once in the bay, the question was put to Quatre, who had been the unofficial leader of the little expedition. 

The youthful looking pilot shrugged his shoulders, and said, "We went to where it had been thought to crash first, and found a few pieces of metal, but the Gundam was gone. We don't know what happened to it."

"There was nothing there?" blurted out Zechs in surprise.

"Like Quatre said," answered Trowa, "there was only a few scattered fragments of metal."

"Reports were that _Wing Zero_ had come down mostly intact," was Lady Une's thoughtful comment.

"Well, it isn't there now," growled Duo. "And us standing around moping about it won't help any."

Relena had been standing mostly silent this whole time, so her voice brought some startled gazes. "What about _Wing_?"

"Huh?" asked Hilde intelligently. Behind her, Sally frowned as a sudden pain lanced through her temples. She rubbed her head, trying to battle a sudden wave of vertigo. A familiar voice thundered incomprehensibly in her ears.

"_Wing_," Relena repeated. "Didn't it survive the wars?" Sally struggled to keep her eyes open and fought down the wave of nausea that swept through her guts. The pain in her head was growing.

Duo nodded quietly. "Sally recovered it after it was damaged the day Heero flew the _Epyon_. After it'd been smashed by Libra's beam cannon, Sally oversaw the repairs again then hid it away in case Heero needed a back-up suit." The braided man turned from the pieces of _Deathscythe_. "What did you do with _Wing_, Sally? Sally!" The last was a shout of surprise as the woman crumpled to the ground. 

Several anxious hours later, the doctors pronounced her fit for visitors. After a brief conference in which they decided it would be best not to all troop in, Wufei and Relena went in alone.

Sally looked up wanly from where she lay. She mustered a smile, though, for her fiancé and her friend. "I remember now," she began quietly. She looked at Wufei. "Do you remember way, way back, in early 197? When you came to my room that morning cause you thought I'd overslept?" At Wufei's nod, she continued. "I looked like I hadn't gotten any sleep because I'd been drugged and interrogated nearly all night." Her smile turned rueful. "I was too stubborn to just give in and let him know where it was."

"Let who know where what was?" asked Relena, feeling that she knew the answer already. 

"Heero," she whispered. Sally's eyes flared with anger. "He drugged me and interrogated me all night to learn where I'd hidden _Wing_. Kept saying something about how it was necessary for his mission."

Confusion dotted the faces of her friends as they traded a glance. Then Wufei turned back to Sally. "Where did you hide _Wing_?"

In the hall, the doctor was talking quietly to the others. "Her reaction was the result of some very strong hypnotic suggestions to forget a certain event. Time had deteriorated the barrier, so it only took the right phrase or situation to crumble it entirely. The rush of memory that surged through her mind was the reason she fainted."

After the doctor had left, Zechs turned to the others. "Now, we just need to find out why the reference of _Wing_ triggered this reaction."

"Heero interrogated Sally as to where she'd hidden _Wing_ in 195," came Relena's clear voice. Everyone else whipped around to stare at her. "She'd put it in a cave system on the abandoned isle of Luzon."

"The Dead Isle," whispered Catherine in shock, the horror in her voice reflected in the faces of the others present.

Relena nodded. "Sally felt that since most of the island was still irradiated from the atomic strikes in A.C. 13, no-one would go looking for a Gundam there."

******************************************************************************

8 March

The transport ship flew high above the deceptively placid waters of the Pacific Ocean. In the pilot's chair was Duo. Riding co-pilot was Trowa. In the back, Relena and Zechs looked out the windows down onto the blasted islands that had been a tropical paradise centuries ago. 

"Nearly two hundred years later and the place is still a barren waste caused by one man's megalomania," snarled Zechs.

Relena looked at her brother with sympathy in her eyes. She patted him on the shoulder and took her seat as Duo's voice floated back to let them know they were nearing the place where _Wing_ was concealed.

Once down, they exited the ship carrying radiation detectors. No one needed to remind him or herself that this place could be safe one step and then next step would be knee-deep in radioactive sludge. They weaved their way through the deadly terrain, heading toward the mouth of a cave. Relena whistled quietly. The mouth was nearly large enough to admit _Wing _standing upright. 

Zechs heard her awed whistle and smiled faintly. "This was called the Callao Caves," he said. "There was a chapel inside the first chamber and small alcoves further in where religious icons were placed."

"How do you know so much about this cave?" asked Duo, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous darkness. 

"I studied the history of these islands when I was a boy. I had to know each of the major island groups and master the most common language, though there hasn't been a nation here for a very long time."

"You can speak their language?" asked Trowa.

"A little," answered Zechs. "Just barely enough to get by in the day-to-day life that existed here once." His eyes were sad as they continued in. 

The caves were less a tunnel than a series of connected caverns. They passed through four large caves, each large enough to house a Gundam or three. When Trowa noted that, Duo muttered that this would be a good place to conceal the Gundams when the war was over. Duo remarked idly that even the _Serpent_ suits that Mariemaia had given them would fit here. Quatre's voice suddenly echoed back through the caves to where the others were standing. The youthful pilot had gone ahead into the last cavern. As his companions hurried over the slick ground to the connecting passage, they saw why he had shouted. 

_Wing_ was gone.

******************************************************************************

10 March

Relena stepped out of the elevator into the hanger where the pilots were hard at work reassembling the Gundams. She watched for several moments, and prayed that the Neo-Oz forces wouldn't be attacking soon. _Sandrock_ was the farthest along in the rebuilding process, and its primary servo-laden skeleton wasn't complete. The _Serpent_ MS were all ready to go, but the intelligence they had so far indicated that those suits wouldn't last five seconds in pitched battle with the Neo-Oz forces. They were instead being stripped for parts. Even with such a handy supply of raw material to rebuild the inside of their Gundams, they were still without armor. The shipment of gundanium that had been confiscated by the Preventers was being held in a secure facility on the other side of the ocean. Sally and Lady Une were desperately trying to get that armor released from holding to affect the necessary final repairs to the Gundams. 

Relena sighed and turned back to the elevator. She had much to do. As she pressed the button summoning the elevator, alarms started blaring through the compound. The pilots looked up from their work in confusion, then abandoned their projects and ran over to where Relena stood. The doors opened and closed, then the elevator shot away, bearing within four Gundam pilots and the Foreign Minister. 

Arriving at the command center mere minutes later, Relena and her friends learned the awful truth: radar had detected about a hundred incoming objects. Close range scans had confirmed their fears: the intruders were _Grendel_ class fighters led by a _Hercules _unit. And they were headed right for the Mansion.

In the cave, the faint reverberations of rocket thrusters were dying away in the still air. All of the monitors were showing the same thing. They were tracking inbound objects whose heading would be landing them at the Cinq Mansion in an hour. 

Relena glared at the radar screen, as if by sheer force-of-will she could make the data displayed change. "How long can we hold out?" she asked, even though she knew the answer as well as any others there.

"Without the Gundams to fight off these guys," answered Duo, "we won't last three seconds." At the grim faces that accompanied that declaration, Relena turned her eyes to the heavens and silently prayed for a miracle. The sudden beeping of an incoming transmission grabbed their attention. At Relena's nod, a tech punched the message onto the screen.

The man looked to be in his late twenties. Eyes that burned with fanatic fire bored into Relena's. His voice came over the line next; harsh and cold as a winter's night, he said, "Relena Dorlian Peacecraft, I am Captain Banner of Neo-Oz. I am here to accept your surrender to my superior forces. You have ten minutes to surrender, or I will level the city beyond your walls." The Captain sat back in his seat, looking quite smug.

Relena was shaking with fury, and her friends weren't much better off. Behind her, she could her Quatre cursing himself for not having rebuilt _Sandrock_ the moment he learned about the Neo-Oz threat. Relena patted him on the shoulder and whispered that it wasn't his fault. He'd done all he could. Tears were gathering in many eyes as they came to the pure knowledge that they were all going to die in a few minutes and there wasn't anything they could do to stop it.

The communications console suddenly bleeped, and a third transmission cut in. Gasps of shock split the air in the control room. Familiar blue eyes glittered, nearly obscured by thick brown locks that were falling forward. Age has matured his features, Relena thought irrelevantly.

"Attention, Neo-Oz forces. I am Heero Yuy, Pilot, of the Gundam _Omega Wing. _You have ten seconds to surrender to me or I will destroy your entire force."

Banner sat frozen for several long moments. Then he began to laugh. Without changing expression, Heero began to count down from ten. "Three. Two. One." Heero nodded once. "Time's up." His transmission suddenly faded from the screen.

Banner laughed again, and looked to his left. "_Grendels_! Destroy the town!"

Relena cried out in horror as her friends began to shout at Banner. Trowa was the first to notice that the room was vibrating. He grabbed his wife's arm and got her attention. In moments, the entire room was silent as the strength of the vibrations increased. A roar worthy of mythical dragons assaulted their ears. On the screens, a signal suddenly appeared. One of the technicians hit a few buttons, bringing up external camera views. 

Banner was in shock. Just when the _Grendels_ had been about to turn on the town, he'd called a halt. The huge form that had barely cleared the Mansion's roof was settling onto the ground before his force. It was nearly eighty feet tall, and gleamed as though polished to the highest sheen. 

Banner swallowed. He'd seen all the footage of the Gundams taken in 195 and 196. This new Gundam looked as though 01 and _Zero_ _Custom_ had been fused. It was also nearly five meters taller. Huge arms and legs belied the deadly grace and speed that such a vehicle was capable of. Physical appearances, however, had only held Banner's eyes for a few moments. He was focused on the rifle that the monstrous Gundam was pulling from its place of concealment between the wings. Three barrels in a triangle formation, with two handles coming out at angles to allow easy handling of the unit, were leveled at his force. 

With an almost contemptuous gesture, two blasts were fired from _Omega's _rifle. One shot to each side of the central _Hercules _unit, and all the _Grendels_ were atomic dust. "The blaster still has three shots," commented Heero as he dropped the rifle. "But I think I'll make this personal."

Banner snarled in fury and leveled his own beam weapon at the Gundam he faced. "Eat this!" And Banner fired right for _Omega's _chest plate, behind which was the pilot. As the yellow beam capable of reducing a city to ashes in seconds burned its way through the air toward his opponent, Banner laughed. The idiot wasn't even trying to shield himself from the blast!

In the control room, they lost the picture as the beam slammed into _Omega. _Banner laughed again and ceased firing. Spots faded slowly before his eyes, and a blurry image took form. Banner froze in terror.

Two furrows were torn through the ground, almost a hundred feet long. His gaze followed the furrows, and came to rest on two large mobile suit feet. Banner's eyes tracked slowly upwards, to come to rest on _Omega Wing. _A faint black spot, trailing thin black smoke, on the chest plate was the only indication that anything had happened. The Gundam suddenly tilted forward and raced for its enemy. Hands reached to opposite shoulders and twin beam sabers were plucked from hidden compartments. Banner desperately drew his blade and set himself to take on his greatest challenge.

In the control room, nothing moved as they silently watched two titans clash in mortal battle. In mere moments, however, Duo began to swear so sulfurously that Noin and Hilde both slapped him. Trowa and Wufei, however, were also beginning to swear. Quatre punched the wall behind him as hard as he could, and Zechs was gnawing on his fingers, something he did only in times of the greatest stress. 

"What is it with you men?" snapped Dorothy as she tried to keep her husband from breaking his hand.

"That mobile suit's way too fast," barked Zechs. 

"It's nearly as fast as a mobile doll," added Wufei, before lapsing back into his native tongue. With great fear, the women turned their eyes back to the screen.

Heero slammed the controls in a wild pattern, barely avoiding a swipe that would have decapitated him. _Can't die yet, you fool! You haven't completed your mission! Get it together! _In the only place where Heero Yuy allowed emotions to show on his face, a twisted snarl of rage contorted his features. This guy was fast. Heero shot left; made two feints, then a third, and his opponent never saw it coming. The beam saber in the left hand of his Gundam punched right through the armor of the _Hercules _Gundam and vaporized the pilot. The dead body of the mobile suit slumped to the ground as Heero withdrew his saber and replaced his weapons in their holders. Picking up his beam rifle, he slung it easily on the back of his Gundam. 

On the screens in the control room, the gang watched as Heero's Gundam lifted the dead _Hercules_ unit and moved toward the hangar doors. As one, they headed down.

A few minutes later, they watched as Heero carefully set the enemy suit down on the ground and settled the _Omega Wing _into his slot, left empty this whole time. As Heero descended from his Gundam's cockpit, he silently took stock of those he saw before him. Trained senses were picking up subtle, and not-so-subtle, hints. Zechs was mixed between furious at him and relieved, Heero could tell. Heero's mouth tightened slightly as he realized that everyone else was in the same frame of mind. Except…Relena. She was just happy to see him, but she was burying it under her diplomat's mask. Heero let his features settle into the same old "Perfect Soldier" mask that he'd formed to keep anyone from getting close. 

"Welcome back, Heero," said Relena as she stepped up to him and extended her hand. He took it and shook it once, then let go and reassumed a rigid stance. "How long can we expect you to stay?" Relena was silently grateful that she'd kept her voice from trembling. She couldn't stand the thought that he would leave her again. 

"I will be here until _Omega Wing _is at full capability," he responded his voice the same impassive monotone that had struck fear in many opponents over the years.

Relena could not keep the shock from showing on her face, and neither could several others. Behind her she could hear Sally repeat Heero's last words, the confusion clear in her voice. Trowa suddenly stepped up to the Gundam and touched the plating on its right foot. Without a word, he motioned for the other pilots to join him. Heero stood silent, allowing them to examine his Gundam. 

"The metal is showing signs of fatigue and buckling," said Quatre in a hushed tone.

"Gundanium doesn't..." Relena started in denial, only to be cut off by Trowa.

"No, gundanium doesn't buckle or fatigue. But this isn't gundanium on the foot," he finished, turning to Heero for an answer. The silent pilot merely motioned them to follow him. A few minutes later, in the briefing room, he began to explain.

After recovering his Gundams six years ago, he'd worked to combine them into a more powerful unit. During this he'd discovered a secret formula contained in the memory banks of _Zero. _The scientists who'd built the massive war machines had designed a more powerful armor to be refined from gundanium, but had abandoned its formula when they had discovered the sheer power of the Zerosystem. Fearing an invincible mobile suit that would fall into the wrong hands, they'd secreted the knowledge away, hoping that it would never be found. Heero had used the armor of his two Gundams to make the new alloy, but the conversion rate was nearly twenty-to-one. 

"From the two Gundams, I'd recovered nearly four tons of armor. After refining them, I only had four hundred pounds of armor. Because I would have needed nearly five tons of armor for the entire Gundam, I placed all I had above the cockpit and used titanium for the rest of the armor."

"And titanium couldn't hold up to the strains placed on it by your maneuvering at full speed, eh?" asked Duo.

"No, Duo, it couldn't," replied Heero in a flat voice.

He then explained that after finishing the Gundam to the best of his ability, he'd sat back and watched Neo-Oz's progress. Careful leaking of rumors to the right people had alerted the Preventers to the Neo-Oz organization, which otherwise would still be relatively unknown. He hadn't expected such a sudden attack, however. He'd been planning on the shipment of gundanium that Wufei and Sally had confiscated to use to manufacture more of the new alloy to finish the armor on his Gundam.

Through the whole story Relena just sat silent, not really caring what it was that had brought him back. He was here! And that was enough for now. As the meeting broke up, the pilots headed for the door. They had to get their Gundams finished. 

"Heero." The soft voice froze everyone in his or her tracks. The aforementioned pilot turned slowly and fixed his gaze on the speaker. Relena glanced at the others, and then spoke in a quiet voice. "Would you all leave us for a few moments?"

The exodus resumed, with Zechs being the last one to reach the door. Just before exiting, he flashed Heero a glare worthy of the Perfect Soldier himself. Heero nodded, understanding at once the message implicit within that gaze. Heero then turned back to Relena and waited for her to speak.

In on of the sitting rooms, Dorothy took a seat a little heavily, the baby already making her slightly awkward. The other women all joined her there, and their talk turned to the baby and what they would name it. None voiced the fears that they felt at that moment, for none of them knew whether their husbands would still be alive after the coming battle.

In the cavernous bay below the Mansion, Wufei pulled out the disk that Heero had given him just moments before closing the door to the conference room. Quatre and Trowa gathered close to examine the formula being displayed as Duo examined the structural designs for their old Gundams. He shook his head suddenly and turned to his comrades.

"Hey, guys!" When they turned to see him, he motioned to the plans he was looking at. "The old designs were good six years ago. But we're facing new enemies with better weaponry. We need to upgrade our designs again."

The pilots gathered together and looked at the schematics displayed on the screen. Their talk turned to possible alterations in the designs to meet the new threat to peace. After several hours of redesign, the new Gundams were proudly displayed in all their holographic glory.

Aside from size and maneuverability, _Sandrock_ and _Shenlong_ were basically unchanged. However, Duo and Trowa had made several very significant changes to their Gundams. 

Labeling his new friend _Hellscythe_, Duo's smile reached epic proportions as he took in the new wing design, a flexible yet rigid synthetic that would temporarily cloak the deadly Gundam, as well as supplying additional protection from enemy fire. His scythe was different, too. Almost half again as long as the previous model, it had energy blades projecting from each end. A special switch built into the long staff would activate servos that would briefly double the length of the weapon, allowing Duo to eliminate enemies on all sides in close range in mere seconds.

Trowa, who had opened up somewhat since marrying Catherine, felt no need to rename his Gundam as Duo had. The new _Heavyarms_ design had additional ammunition packs to enable him to remain in battle nearly four times longer than previous models. Returned to the _Heavyarms_ was something Trowa had rather missed on the upgraded models years ago: a heavy blade that would swing out when he was out of ammunition. His only concession to the change of times was to place one on each arm.

The whine of the elevator brought the four friends around from the new designs. The doors opened and Heero emerged. Silent as always, the Japanese pilot examined the new designs, nodded once, then turned to begin stripping armor from his Gundam. Galvanized into action by Heero's obvious resolve, the other four pilots jumped to work. 

Left unspoken amongst them was the conversation Heero and Relena had shared. 

Far away at the Mars Neo-Oz base, Lazarus smashed him fist against the table. A _Gundam_ had defended the Mansion! Rage flooded him as he gave orders to prepare all units to move out. The thing which irked him the most was that it would take nearly seven months to make it to Earth in the lumbering transports that they had.

Despite the obvious time that his enemies would have to prepare, Lazarus was sure that they would never be ready for the overwhelming force he was going to lead against the ESUN. Six hundred and twenty-three Hercules units were fully operational, and there were over five thousand Grendels ready for battle. 

Laughter rang through the passages of the base as Lazarus looked into the deepest hangar. The dark form concealed therein was his personal revenge for being robbed of his ascendancy to be ruler of the ESUN. "Time to go, my friend," he purred as he personally supervised the loading of his greatest triumph.

"Time to for us both to return to Earth!"

******************************************************************************

18 March

"Hey guys!" Dorothy's voice cut through the air in the hanger, grabbing the pilots' attention from their work. "We just figured out how that suit was able to move so fast." She paused, drawing out the suspense. Noting their growing irritation, she took pity on them and explained it. The _Hercules_ suit had an interface similar to the Zero system, but it was far more stable. The drawback was that most of the people who would be plugged into such a thing would get their brains melted by the neural overload. The advantage was that nearly one in five people would be able to utilize such a system with no adverse side affects appearing for decades.

"Great!" snarled Duo as he threw the wrench in his hand down. "Just when it can't get any worse, it does!"

"There's one more piece of bad news about this system," Sally spoke up from behind the pregnant Mrs. Winner. "This system gives nearly full access to the brain's neural pathways, which would mean that anyone who gets plugged into this system could be brainwashed to an extent previously unknown in history. We think that the spies we tried to get into Neo-Oz were plugged into this system and their true objectives were revealed. The contacts would have committed suicide the moment they realized that they'd been compromised." 

"How did they ever get their hands on Zerotechnology?" asked Quatre, his tone showing his complete and total confusion. The other pilots stopped moving entirely, trying to figure out how that could have happened. No one there, however, had any answers. 

Heero scowled as he turned back to the backbreaking work of stripping armor from his Gundam. Hate was something Heero knew about as well as he knew laughter, but he knew he did not like the fact that such powerful technology was in the hands of their enemies at all. How did Neo-Oz manage to get their hands on it? 

That night, as Duo lowered his exhausted body into bed, he reflected on that little piece of news. Lady Une had shown up later, to let them know that she'd had to order all agents assigned to the Neo-Oz assignment pulled off. She couldn't afford to lose more people. Duo fell into a troubled sleep, the designs of his new Gundam flowing through his mind.

Out in the gardens, Heero sat on a bench. In his hand he held the gold and jade barrette that Relena had tossed into the fountain years ago. He knew where his mind should be. It should be working out the current mess they were all in. He should be thinking about the weaknesses of their enemy's new system, and maybe even the weaknesses in his own. 

Yet his mind was on a different sort of weakness, the sort that made his hand tremble around the bit of jewelry. It was his own sort of weakness that had plagued him all through the first war, and now into this one. It never seemed to go away, it just continued to grow and follow him no matter where he tried to run. It was always the same. In his mind, it always looked the same. Relena's eyes stalked him into every dark corner he flung himself, and into every sunlit city. 

But why? The gold creaked under his grip. Nothing in his life had ever haunted him like this. Why hadn't he killed her when he first meant to? A simple gunshot it would have been back then. She hadn't wielded any power then. She was just in his way. So didn't you try to shoot her, Heero? What stayed your hand? Pity? Never! He had no mercy for anyone, including himself. Why did you let her live? She knew too much. Was it her bravery? The fact that she followed you even though she realized that you had both the power and the will to take her life? He'd always credited that part of her character to stupidity. And you never did have the will did you? You never could kill her. It wasn't for lack of opportunities; it was your own cowardice. Him? A coward? Yet Relena had implied that very thing herself when she had spoken with him in private. There had been many things discussed in that conference, but none so powerful as the last.

"You don't have to be afraid to stay here," she had told him, her eyes betraying the calm she was commanding in her face.

"I'm not," he had fired back firmly, not allowing himself to look at her. To him, it wasn't a lie, but he knew that she thought that was exactly what it was.

"Heero, I –" she cut off, blushing. "We need you here. You know that we can't do this ourselves." She had meant to say something else. She had something to confess to him, but she wouldn't allow herself to say it out loud. He wasn't the only one lying to himself after all. Her emotions seemed to choke her for a moment, and the silence hung heavy in the darkened room. She turned from him, and he barely heard what she said.

"Please don't run away again." 

He sniffed at the memory before realizing he was still alone in the garden. He never ran away from anything. He knew what he was doing; he always had! So why did her eyes continue to stare deep into him, as if they knew something he didn't? Why couldn't he leave her alone, since he couldn't kill her? He swore under his breath. It was because she knew something he didn't understand. There was something she knew about him, the indecipherable Heero Yuy, which made him seek her out year after year. She always had known too much.

He shook his head violently. He didn't have time for this now. Why don't you just march into her room and demand the answer from her at gunpoint, Heero? Something inside of him whispered that things didn't work that way. So what do I do? He stared at the barrette without seeing it. What am I supposed to do? Images of Duo and Hilde rose in his mind, how happy they seemed together. And Zechs and Noin, they too had found what they had always been seeking in the other. Is that what he should do? Is that how one becomes whole? Was that the remedy for the emptiness and frustration that had been with him his whole life? No, Heero, those things aren't for you. You have a mission you need to fulfill. Besides, you've done nothing but hurt and threaten her ever since she first found you, what makes you think she'd even think about it? It's easier to be alone, Heero, you know this. He heard a snap and winced at the sound and his thoughts. His hand relaxed and he sighed deeply. Relena could keep her secret, if that's what she wanted. He didn't care…he didn't care about anything! But there was a pain in his throat, and a voice in his ears, that gave lie to the words.

_"Please don't run away again."_

I'm not a coward. 

_"Don't be afraid." _

I've never been afraid of anything! 

_"Don't run away." _

I have my reasons for leaving, and none of them are because of fear. 

_"Then what is it?" _

It's none of your business, Relena, you already know too much. You've got something of mine that I never gave you, and I want it back. I want it back so that I can tell what it is. What is it, Relena? She smiled in his head, a soft and sad sort of smile. _"Please?"_

He growled, "I'm not what you think" as he shook her voice from his mind. She was his weakness; that's what she had taken from him. It had to be. That was why he was both drawn and repelled by her. But he could deal with things like that, and after this mission, he was going to leave her behind him forever like he had all the other weaknesses before. There was something in his mind that told him that this wasn't true, but he was determined not to think about it anymore. Resolved in his cold logic, he stalked out of the garden, leaving behind him the snapped pieces of the ruined barrette glittering in the grass.

******************************************************************************

28 June, A.C. 202

"Ok, Quatre! Bring it up nice and slow!" Trowa was directing the blonde pilot in guiding the hand of _Sandrock_ into position. Across the hangar, Heero was manipulating the machinery that was shaping the newly forged neo-gundanium into the armor for their Gundams. Wufei and Duo were calibrating the energy projectors for their beam weapons. 

A sudden screech of tortured metal gripped them like a vise, however. Their attention torn from their tasks, Heero, Wufei, and Duo whipped around just in time to see the hand of _Sandrock_ smash to the ground where Trowa had been standing mere moments before. Running over to help their friends, the determined that no physical harm had been done. But…

"It's ruined!" screamed Quatre, the youthful seeming billionaire nearly in tears. "It was the last one and now we have to build it all over again!"

It had taken them nearly twenty minutes to calm their distressed friend. As Heero slipped into his bed that night, he thought about the past three months. They had been going non-stop on this rebuilding, and it was killing them. 

The taciturn assassin-turned-pilot got out of bed and put on a shirt. After pulling on some pants, he exited his room and glided through the mansion on silent feet. Arriving at his destination, Heero entered the room without making a sound. The bed was off to his left, and he approached it in an assassin's deadly glide. Two forms were curled up against each other amongst the twisted covers. He was only a few feet away when the sudden click of a gun's safety being released halted him in his tracks.

"Heero Yuy, I know you don't like me and would love to kill me, but can you come back at some sane hour and try it?" Zechs sat up in bed, lowering his gun and putting the safety back on before replacing it under his pillow. Noin stirred next to him, alerted by the quietly annoyed tone of voice that he was speaking in. Catching sight of their visitor, she let out a muffled "eep!" and clutched the covers around her neck. She'd never thought twice about sleeping in the nude before now…

Heero ignored her obvious embarrassment and addressed Noin, giving Zechs all the regard one would extend to an errant breeze. "The other pilots are feeling strained. We lost a hand today from machinery malfunction, but the reaction was as if the Gundams had simultaneously self-detonated. They need a break."

After several moments, and seeing no further information coming from the deadliest human being in existence, Noin nodded. "I'll see what I can do."

******************************************************************************

3 July

Heero glared at the main computer of the Gundam _Heavyarms_. It wasn't working. The programming that interpreted the movements of the controls to move the machine's arms wasn't operating correctly. With a muffled curse, he dropped the palm unit he was using to the floor of the cockpit and tapped on the control surfaces of the consoles surrounding the pilot's chair. After having spent several hours futilely pecking out commands and corrections, he was ready to smash the whole thing to smithereens. 

Worse, Noin had left the mansion the morning after Heero's midnight visit. The other pilots were rapidly deteriorating under the pressure of reassembling their Gundams. Heero shook his head briefly, silently admitting to himself in the deepest part of his mind that he, too, was feeling the strain.

Suddenly, silence filled the hangar. Heero frowned and pulled himself to his feet and moved to look out the entrance to the cockpit. The other pilots had ceased their work and deactivated the various machines that were aiding their reconstruction efforts. A smirk threatened to form on his lips as he saw the reason: Dorothy, Hilde, Sally, and Catherine were leading their men toward the elevator doors, obviously intent on making sure that the tired pilots took the day off. Heero grabbed the descent rope and let the motor lower him to the ground. Noin was standing there, waiting for him.

After he was down, she gave him a small packet. "This is what you're going to do today, Heero," she said with a wicked smile on her face. Turning, she went after the others, who were already boarding the elevator. "And don't try to sneak back in here for at least forty-eight hours!" 

Heero opened the packet, and read the documents inside. Noin wanted him to go out and find a hotel in the city and sleep for a few hours, than visit a masseuse and a hot spring bath in town. Shaking his head, he shoved the packet into his pocket and headed out of the hangar.

As he lay on the table in the masseuse's parlor, he couldn't help but wonder what the other pilots were up to. Heero frowned, then almost slugged himself in the forehead. Of course he had a good idea what they were doing. What better way for them to relax than to be with the women they had fallen in love with?

After he was done at the masseuse parlor, he went to his hotel room and slept the night away, intending to visit the hot baths the next day.

******************************************************************************

5 July

Heero walked into the hangar, oddly at ease with himself. He shook his head and concentrated for a few seconds, trying to get himself back into the mindset of the perfect soldier. A soldier must never be at ease. To be at ease was to invite attack from an enemy waiting for that very instant of fatal distraction. 

As he moved deeper into the cavernous chamber, he saw that the other pilots obviously did not share his philosophy. Quatre was humming slightly as he finished the adjustments to the new hand, Trowa was doing a few idle flips as he moved over his guns and ammo packs, and Duo was wailing some obnoxious American song at the top of his lungs. It was well known that Hilde had thought she was pregnant some time ago, and even though she'd only skipped a period, Duo didn't seem to mind. Rather, the still-boyish man had only commented (with a smirk from ear-to-ear) that he would still have the time of his life trying for a baby.

Heero shook his head and looked over to where Wufei was finishing the delicate work necessary to make his Dragon Fangs work correctly. Wufei at least would be acting serious…Heero nearly walked over to a wall to bang his head against it when he saw that Wufei was smiling as he worked. 

The perfect soldier turned back to look at his Gundam, finished already. Now fully armored with the neo-gundanium, _Omega_ _Wing_ was ready for battle. With a decisive nod, Heero went over to help Duo make the final modifications to his new scythe. At least the two-day leave had allowed them to unwind. Work would go much faster now.

******************************************************************************

14 July

Work was halted that morning when Relena had burst into the hangar to scream at Quatre that Dorothy was going into labor. The startled man had practically flown from his Gundam, only to come to a screeching halt scant inches before entering the elevator. He'd turned to see an indulgent smile gracing Trowa's face. Duo was in near hysterics, while Wufei tried to keep his customarily sour face, but it was obvious to those who knew him that the Chinese pilot was clearly happy for his comrade. Heero merely cast a glance Quatre's way, and waved him gone. 

Needing no further persuasion, Quatre had disappeared into the elevator with Relena. When he'd returned that night, he bore with him the happy news: he and Dorothy were the proud parents of _twins! _Once they'd gotten over the shock of that announcement, Quatre had, with all the pride of a new father, showed them holopics of his children. A girl and a boy. After several poor jokes from Duo on what to name them, Quatre quietly announced that he and Dorothy had already named their children. Cassie and Christopher Winner were the newest additions to their family.

******************************************************************************

23 September, A.C. 202

The five pilots scattered as one of the guns in _Heavyarms's_ chest on suddenly started firing. Heero silently cursed as he dropped twenty feet to the ground from _Heavyarms's_ knee and launched himself to one side. Quatre and Trowa were taking cover behind _Shenlong's_ massive foot while Duo and Wufei sought cover of their own from the madly ricocheting bullets.

Seeing that he was the only one not pinned down, Heero swarmed back up the Gundam to the wires linking the computer to the guns. As close as he was to the barrels, the shuddering percussive blasts were threatening to blow him right off of _Heavyarms_ and into the path of the bullets. Risking losing his hand by reaching in past the madly spinning gatling gun, Heero pulled the wires.

The bullets stopped flying immediately, with the barrels spinning to a stop a few moments later. Relieved expressions graced the faces of the other pilots as the danger passed. Trowa came over to his Gundam and rested a hand on its foot. Heero looked down at the silent man and nodded once. Together, they stuck their heads into the programming governing the Gundam's firing systems and tried to isolate the malfunctioning code.

Duo, Wufei, and Quatre all gathered at the table where there were sports drinks and snacks to help them maintain their strength. As Duo shoved food in his mouth like there was no tomorrow, he looked over the Gundams in the hangar. A warm feeling of pleasure flooded him as he looked over the completed _Shenlong_, _Sandrock_, and _Hellscythe_. _Omega_ _Wing_ had been sitting silent for almost three months. The final adjustments to the firing systems on _Heavyarms_ were all they were waiting for. 

It was a good thing, too, reflected Duo, since early warning systems had been screaming at Preventer HQ for the last month as an enormous fleet of unidentified ships neared the Earth. Duo grabbed another sandwich as he thought about what they would have to do. Sadness flooded his mind as he realized that this time, they would have to kill to maintain the peace.

******************************************************************************

3 October

Lazarus stood on the bridge of the flagship of his fleet. Earth loomed large in the view port as his fleet edged into strike position. As the positioning of his fleet neared finalization, he glanced to one side, where a medium sized freighter was moving from the outer colonies to Earth. He smiled coldly and began issuing orders to prepare his army for deployment.

On Earth, Relena stood in the control room of the Mansion with Pagan at her side. Noin and Lady Une had left the night before to go to Preventer HQ and monitor the movements of the fleet using the more advanced technology there. 

Dorothy had been sent to one of the Winner Mansions with the children to keep them occupied. It was fervently hoped that none of the little ones would be orphaned this day. 

Relena had seen a portion of the argument the woman had had with her husband. She chuckled as she recalled how firmly Quatre had put his foot down and ordered his wife out of the Mansion. The gentle pilot had certainly changed over the years as he had matured. Consequently, the blonde-haired woman had taken the all the children and retired from the Mansion. Hilde had gone with her to help with the rugrats. Sally had gone to the local hospital to get some medical supplies. It was entirely likely that the pilots would return with injuries to treat.

Zechs had left the day before to go dig up the _Tallgeese_ _III_ from where he'd concealed it. He knew that his suit stood no chance against the massive hordes that the Gundams would be facing in space, but he figured he could easily protect the Mansion from any stragglers that got through. And Catherine was down in the bowels of the hangar, monitoring the telemetry from the Gundams. While it was believed that all the bugs were out of the computers built into the huge machines, there was always the possibility that there had been something missed. 

Relena pushed a button and spoke over the intercom to Catherine. "How are the guys' computers holding up their first time in space?"

The gentle circus woman's voice floated out of the speaker before Relena. "Telemetry data is holding steady – no anomalies to report."

Relena turned back to the main monitors and was quiet as she observed the Neo-Oz fleet. Already little specks were flooding out of the larger splotches that were the transport ships. "_Grendel_ and _Hercules_ units," she muttered, stifling a sulfurous curse that would have surely shocked Pagan into a heart attack. Though she was hailed as being the Dove of Peace, she was feeling very war-like as these idiots tried to bring death and war back to a world in a state of peace.

Hovering in space, Heero watched as the enemy forces arranged themselves for battle. Chatter over communication channels between Gundams had stalled after they had come to the agreement that this time, unlike back in 196, they could not afford to hold back. Lethal force was necessary. With a series of meditative breaths, the deadliest human alive steadied himself for battle.

In the remade _Sandrock_, Quatre rubbed his hands together, as though trying to wash off blood. The gentle Arabian pilot had exacted the greatest death toll in 195, and had been so relieved that when he returned to the battle a year late he'd not been forced to kill. Now he would have to become the killing machine that he had been all those years before.

Wufei gripped the controls of his Gundam, and took a deep, relaxing breath. This Gundam was not _Nataku_, because that Gundam had been destroyed in 196. This was not _Nataku_; this was _Saiban_ - this was _Justice_. The Chinese man calmed himself, knowing that he would once more have blood on his hands.

Duo hummed a hymn, trying to drive from his mind the knowledge of the imminent battle. The God of Death had retired six years ago, and had been laid to rest. But Death was not one to lie peacefully in its grave. Now it stirred again, the dark part of his psyche reaching out hungrily for battle.

Trowa sat motionless, sorrowing that it was necessary to kill. The knowledge of what he was about to do made the reticent pilot want to retch. However, if he did not take his place here in space to prevent the descent of Neo-Oz forces, far more blood, and innocent blood at that, would be spilled. _I will do this to prevent the greater evil_, thought Trowa as he began to power up his weaponry. Glancing at his screens, he saw that his friends were also powering up their Gundams in preparation for the coming battle.

Lazarus smiled coldly as he settled his form into the cockpit of a massive mobile suit. Activating the suits systems, he carefully maneuvered it out into space. 

Heero gave an involuntary start of surprise when his scanners picked up a familiar signature. Sharply drawn breaths that echoed over his comm-link told him that the others had noticed it as well. Gleaming red and black gundanium formed the massive body. Its form bore a great resemblance to the _Wing Zero_ that Heero had piloted so many years ago. The hideous machine they now faced was one that they had all believed destroyed years ago. 

"_Epyon_…" Heero whispered. He remembered well the last time he'd flown that nightmarish Gundam. Now it was in the hands of their enemy. Pieces that hadn't made sense before were suddenly clear. After all, Zechs had survived. Why couldn't _Epyon_ as well? Heero set himself and cleared his mind, allowing the Zero system to merge with his consciousness.

His mind expanded as he merged with _Omega Wing_. He could feel the faint brush of stellar dust across his alloyed skin, and his wings flared briefly behind him. Before him was his enemy. The sudden hail from the _Epyon_ took Heero by surprise. With a mere flicker of thought, he acknowledged the call.

The face that was displayed was no surprise to Heero; he'd known who was behind Neo-Oz for almost a year. Wufei, Duo, and Quatre were rather surprised to have been hailed, but they did not know this man who called himself Lazarus.

In the Gundam _Heavyarms_, Trowa Barton could not repress a shiver. He knew that face, those eyes. Though twisted with years of rage and hate, and bearing the scars of wounds received, Trowa recognized the leader of Neo-Oz. He'd last seen him in 195, just before descending to Earth in the original _Heavyarms_. Trowa Barton's gaze locked with that of Trowa Barton.

"You survived being shot in 195," came Heero's voice across the comm, jolting the _Heavyarms_ pilot from his shock. "You were treated and recovered somewhat. Your salvage teams must have stumbled across the _Epyon_ when scouring for neo-titanium to use to make new mobile suits. You used the technology you found there to forge an army of gundanium mobile suits and repaired the _Epyon_; and now you've come to Earth to try to rip it from the grasp of the people who want an end to war." The cold eyes of Lazarus, born Trowa Barton, shifted to glare at Heero Yuy.

"We are here to stop you." Lazarus threw back his head and laughed long and hard. 

"But Heero, you don't understand." Lazarus stopped laughing and leveled a calm gaze at the five men opposing him. "I've already won." The Gundam pilots stiffened in their seats, not understanding what he meant, but the gnawing feeling that ripped through their guts told them that Lazarus was going to explain.

They didn't have to wait long. The insane leader of Neo-Oz flipped a switch, changing the video feed from his face to a view from a _Hercules_ unit. Heero froze, ice water suddenly running through his veins. His mind was suddenly wrenched from its communion with _Omega_, and the shock of separation left him feeling weak and unable to move. Gasps of horror from the other pilots confirmed what he was seeing.

In the control room, Relena's face went pale as she saw the Mansion appear on the video line from the Gundams. Quickly turning to a scanner, she saw several signatures appear in the forest. Five _Hercules_ units were hidden out there.

"I stuck them in on a transport ship just a few hours ago," whispered Lazarus. "Now, we remove the greatest obstacle to the ascendance of the Barton Family!" As a faint chuckle reverberated over the audio circuits, Heero stiffened, his mind screaming that he wasn't seeing what he was seeing: a wave of deadly firepower streaking toward the Cinq Mansion. Within moments, the home of the Peacecrafts was reduced to splinters and broken glass.

Lazarus laughed harder, his harsh amusement still being transmitted on all frequencies. His laughter was abruptly cut off, however, as he was forced to block a beam saber that would have decapitated the _Epyon_. 

To any observer, the fight must have seemed ill fated from the beginning for the red Gundam, as its opponent was obviously far more powerful. However, Lazarus proved himself quite capable with _Epyon's_ weaponry as he defended himself against the insane attack of Heero Yuy. 

Concealed behind his Gundam's armor, the most deadly human being in existence was snapping orders to his main computer. With a twitch of his controls, he sent one huge gundanium foot slamming into the _Epyon's_ chest, quite effectively sending the awful machine into a brief tailspin, completely out of control. 

Heero gave the final orders and forced his mind to resume the Zen-like state that he had been in before witnessing the death of Relena Peacecraft. Once he was again the emotionless killing machine the he had been for nearly all his remembered life, the mind of Heero Yuy and the computer of _Omega_ _Wing_ joined. No controls were needed to pilot the ultimate masterpiece of mobile suit design. Thought was deed. And with the system that Heero had included while rebuilding it several years back…

Though they had looked inside the cockpit over the months that they were rebuilding their Gundams, the other pilots had never realized that every control surface in _Omega_ was waterproof. Likewise, none of them had ever noticed the ports that were now opening, releasing a pinkish fluid into the cockpit. Within moments, no air was left inside. The space was filled with oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion. Heero forced his mouth open and breathed in the liquid. It hurt like acid going down, but there was an upside to breathing this heavily oxygenated mixture: the pilot could endure extremes of G-force that would kill someone trying to breathe the gaseous mixture life-support systems usually put out. 

_Epyon_ was violently jerked around as Lazarus finally regained control. His forces were hovering back, awaiting his order to attack. He glanced at them on his screen, and then turned his gaze back to his enemy. Twin beam sabers split the midnight darkness of space. Eyes that glowed with the same emerald shade were fixed on him, it seemed. Then Lazarus noticed something. 

Warriors' intuition: it was a thing that few people ever achieved. Called many things over time, it boiled down to a sense of what would happen; it was the knowledge of how your enemy would react. Sometimes, it was that "sixth sense" that warned of danger. Lazarus's senses were screaming fit to wake the dead. Some thing had drastically changed about this whole battle. Warily, he re-approached _Omega_, noting the strange motions it was going through; almost as though it were stretching. 

In _Omega_, Heero smiled. Lazarus' hesitation had given him all the time he'd needed to adjust to breathing "water." Now it was time for Lazarus to die. With a flicker of thought, Heero sent a written message to _Epyon_, then surged forward.

In the _Epyon_, Lazarus stared with horror at the message glowing in white lettering before him: "_Omae_ _wo_ _korosu_." Lazarus couldn't speak a lick of Japanese, but this message had been in Heero's file. It was the trademark of the pilot who had lived through everything mortal man could throw at him…and more beyond. "_Omae wo korosu_"-"_I will kill you._" No compromise. No mercy. No regret.

Lazarus desperately brought his close range weapons to bear as he screamed into his comm link for reinforcements. Thousands of _Grendels_ and _Hercules_ suits dutifully roared to their master's side. But even as they did so, four Gundams surged forward to aid their comrade. 

Battle was joined as the four pilots found their abilities pushed beyond the envelope of training and raw talent. _Grendels_ shattered like porcelain dolls under the hail of _Heavyarms'_ gatling guns and missile barrages. In _Hellscythe_, the God of Death reached out and claimed his victims. With tears running down his face at the necessity of taking lives, Quatre sailed through the enemy ranks, destroying the occasional Hercules unit as the number of decimated _Grendels_ increased. Dragon fangs punched through armor and crushed heads, exacting horrific death tolls. 

Five against five thousand. It was a hopeless battle, but this was what they did. The pilots fought for all they loved and held dear and woe to those who would threaten the peace! But even with the new armor and the increased capabilities of their new Gundams, they were being slowly overrun by the seemingly endless enemy horde. Even Heero, though still fighting _Epyon_, would be forced to break away for a few moments to destroy interlopers in his personal war. Only the fact that he could now maneuver at accelerations that would kill unprotected pilots saved his life time and again.

As Duo sent another five pilots to their graves in the vast reaches of space, he noted that no less than twenty _Hercules_ suits were closing on the Japanese pilot. With a curse at the horde of _Grendels_ that were trying to kill him, Duo savagely ripped them apart, desperate to aid his friend. 

Even as he fought his way free of one sphere of _Grendels_, Duo found himself within another. Unable to reach his friend, he poured all his rage and grief into his attack. With a scream of primal anger, Death reigned in the spatial war field. 

_Omega_ suddenly twirled, buster rifle plucked from its concealment between the wings of the glorious machine. The yellow beam that arced forth brought death to hundreds of enemy suits, including the group that had been rushing to aid their commander. Replacing the rifle, _Omega_ turned back to _Epyon_. 

Lazarus sat frozen with fear. Seeing _Omega_ suddenly accelerate right for him, Lazarus raised the beam sword to ward it off and flung out the heat rod. But the Gundam wasn't there anymore. Alarms screamed at Lazarus: _Omega_ was right behind him! Twin beam sabers slashed down, cutting off the arms of _Epyon_. Next to go was the left wing, which exploded almost immediately. 

"Im...possi…ble!" gasped Lazarus as _Epyon_ rattled in its death throes. To maneuver that fast…the G-force would have smeared the pilot to jelly! 

When Heero cut off the right wing, the force of the blast shoved _Omega_ back, and sent the remnants of Trieze's prize creation spinning off into the dead blackness of space. With the defeat of their leader, many of the enemy suits stopped attacking, as though they could hardly credit what they were seeing. With a simple written message to the other pilots, _Omega_ shot away from the enemy fleet. 

On the flagship of the Neo-Oz space fleet a captain stared out at the Gundams as he barked orders to pull back and regroup by the carriers. As he watched, the Gundams took up their previous positions between Neo-Oz and Earth. A sudden alert from one of the bridge crew brought him running.

In the cockpit of _Omega_ _Wing_, the fluid drained away, leaving Heero to forcibly expel the liquid remaining in his lungs. After several long heaves, and feeling as though he was breathing fire, Heero severed all transmissions to and from his Gundam. His expression set, Heero linked the power generators in his Gundam to the fusion reactor in the rifle. Flipping switches and deactivating the necessary safeguards took mere seconds. Tears spilled unnoticed from his eyes as he focused on the task at hand: converting every last erg of energy from _Omega_ _Wing_ into a single blast from the rifle. His chest felt strangely hollow, as though it had been ripped open and everything inside torn out. 

Red warning lights exploded to violent life as the systems of _Omega_ _Wing_ struggled to handle the energy being pumped through them. Alarms sounded dimly in Heero's ears as he made the final connections. 

Wufei, Quatre, Trowa, and Duo all shielded their eyes as a wave of light assaulted their view screens. The filters, unable to handle the intensity of the illumination, shut off the video feeds. In the darkness of their cockpits, the pilots waited anxiously to know the outcome of the blast. 

Quatre shivered in his seat. He'd caught the barest of glimpses of the deadly cone of pure energy that had erupted from Heero's rifle. The beam had expanded to heinous proportions before the Arab's horrified gaze before his Gundam had cut the outside video. 

Several eternal minutes passed before their screens came back on. _Omega_ _Wing_ hung there in space, motionless. Floating away slowly was the remains of the buster rifle. Duo stared at it for several moments, absently noting that the rifle, which had been as long as _Omega_ was tall, was now about the size of a pistol to the huge Gundam's hands. The long barrels and reactor chambers had dissolved under the pressure of the blast. 

In the distance, they could see the remnants of the Neo-Oz force in full retreat. The fleet, previously numbered in hundreds of ships, was reduced to a handful. Quatre accessed the satellites his company used and replayed footage recorded just minutes before to determine how many of the enemy had escaped. After several moments, he placed estimates at only about two hundred suits total had escaped the destructive blast from Heero's Gundam.

Heero leaned back in his chair and surveyed the destruction he'd wrought. Neo-Oz was almost entirely gone. The Preventers could wrap up what was left easily. Feeling exhausted beyond words, he set the autopilot to return him to the Mansion. Ignoring the hails from his comrades, he let the Gundam return to earth. After several moments, his comrades in battle fell in behind him, and they began the descent to Earth.

Zechs sat on a broken piece of masonry, tears etching dusty tracks down his cheeks as he gazed out over the rubble that had buried his little sister. Catherine sat next to him as Sally bandaged the few wounds that the brunette circus girl had acquired when the roof of the hangar had partially collapsed from the impact tremors of the destruction of the Mansion. The roaring of thrusters dragged the women's eyes skyward. Five enormous machines settled to the ground not far from where the _Tallgeese_ stood. 

The huge white mobile suit bore mute testimony to the battle that had been waged here by the man formerly known as the "Lightning Count." Five ruined _Hercules_ units littered the forest, the amount of damage done to them almost excessive in nature. Heero found, however, that it wasn't enough to sate him. 

As he descended from his Gundam and joined the trio before the destroyed Mansion, Heero found himself wondering what this cold and empty feeling was. Quatre and Duo were right behind him, and silently took their places behind their friends. Trowa knelt to sit beside his wife, who buried her face in his shoulder. Wufei's arm found a resting-place across Sally's shoulder as he took a seat beside her. 

Heero was motionless for one eternal minute before his feet began to move once more. His steps were steady and slow. Behind him, those gathered remained still, wanting to be there yet afraid of what they would find. Duo looked down, tears spilling down his face to fall to the ground. The braided American knew well what would happen after Relena's body was recovered. His taciturn friend would go out and self detonate in space, to insure that death would come. Duo knew that for all Heero's "Perfect Soldier" routine, Relena had been the only thing that kept him alive through all the battles.

The figure of Heero dwindled in their sight, eventually to vanish among the rubble. Left behind, the friends grieved in their own ways. The central most important person in their lives had been cruelly torn from them, and now they were going to suffer another loss.

Heero stumbled slightly across the broken masonry and wood that had been a beautiful Mansion mere hours before. He wandered aimlessly, wanting to find her yet desperately hoping he would not. 

The Mansion must have been mostly deserted, he thought, as he so far hadn't found a single body. Just as that thought was reviving something in him (Is this what they call hope? he wondered), Heero caught the coppery reek of blood. The brief flare of whatever it had been died, leaving him even emptier than before. 

Heero turned and tracked the smell to its source. Gently moving some rubble away, he found himself looking down at the body of Pagan. Images of the last time Heero had seen Pagan rose unbidden in his mind as Heero stared down at the dead manservant.

_"I will remain by Miss Relena's side the whole time you are gone, Master Yuy," Pagan said in his gentle voice. Heero frowned, as though not understanding what the old man was talking about. Why would the Perfect Soldier care if there were someone by Relena while he was gone? But deep within the recesses of his mind, Heero could feel a little part of him take comfort in knowing there was someone to protect Relena._

Heero returned to the present, remembering those last words from Pagan before the five pilots had climbed into their Gundams and gone to space, only hours before. Heero stiffened as though he'd been shot. Pagan had promised to remain by Relena…

Carefully, Heero dug through the rubble surrounding the dead man. Not even sure he wanted to find another body, Heero dug nonetheless. After several minutes of fruitless shifting through broken glass and stone, Heero sat back on his heels. Relena was nowhere near Pagan. Had Pagan taken his promise so lightly as to abandon her when the Mansion had been attacked? Somehow Heero just couldn't see that happening. 

A new thought surfaced from the depths of his mind. Where was Pagan lying in relation to the control room that he would have been in with Relena? Heero frowned, his mind calculating Pagan's probable location before the Mansion had caved on his head and the location of the room Relena had been in. Heero tensed. It was wrong.

Pagan was lying on what had been the first floor on the other side of the Mansion from the control room. Why would he have been there? In Heero's mind a blueprint of the Mansion opened up. Bedrooms, kitchen, dining room…

Had Heero been moving at that moment, he would have frozen in place like a statue. He quickly thought it out, and began to shake slightly. The dead servant was lying where he most likely have been had he been trying to get to the emergency shelter located twenty feet further down the hall.

Afterwards, Heero couldn't remember what happened next, as the first clear memory he had was of running toward his grieving friends, Relena's limp, but living, body cradled gently in his arms.

******************************************************************************

The hospital waiting room was very crowded. Trowa leaned against the wall beside his wife, who was holding their daughter. Over across the way, Dorothy held Christopher, while Quatre was in the bathroom changing Cassie's diaper. Wufei was pacing before the floor, waiting anxiously as Sally tried to keep herself from dashing through the OR doors to help the surgeons with Relena. Duo and Hilde were sitting quietly, holding each other and praying for Relena's safe recovery. Zechs seemed to be trying to outdo Wufei in the pacing game, while Noin sat with their two children. Peter, being older and far more observant, was about to cry. Zechs gently lifted his son from his seat and held the little boy close as he continued to walk.

From his vantage slightly apart from all this, Heero looked over them again, then fixed his gaze on the doors leading to the OR where the best surgeons in five nearby nations worked to save Relena's life. Her wounds had been worse than thought at first, and it was only thanks to one of the nursing assistants who liked to study medical texts in her spare time that the symptoms of severe hemorrhaging had been caught before it grew beyond all hope of repair.

After almost ten hours of surgery, the doctors emerged. Having reassured everyone multiple times that the Foreign Minister would make a full recovery, given time, the assembled friends began to drift out to find lodging. They couldn't sleep in the hospital, after all.

It almost three hours later when a nurse walked in to check on the Minister's condition. The faint click that resounded through room froze her quite effectively in her tracks. Even if she hadn't heard the sound, the cold metal that was suddenly placed at her temple told her exactly what was happening. 

"Who are you?" 

She shivered, unable to control her reaction at the cold tone. If this person were here to kill the Foreign Minister, she would not be able to stop him. In a shaking voice, she managed to force out that she was the duty nurse for this ward, and was here to check on the Minister Dorlian. The gun barrel was removed from her head, and the nurse cast a frightened glance toward her assailant. It was a man, about six feet tall, with a mop of shaggy brown hair and strangely colored blue eyes. 

"You did not see me here," he growled. "Check on your patient and leave." The woman nodded fearfully, and quickly made sure that Relena Dorlian was stable, then retreated from the room. His voice froze her in her tracks just before she opened the door. "You saw no-one here." She nodded again and quickly exited the room.

The nurse looked around quickly, then pulled a small silver flask from her pocket and took a quick drink. The fiery brandy scorched her throat, and restored her somewhat. After ensuring that her hands were semi-steady once more, she moved on to continue her rounds.

After having checked on all her patients, she returned to her duty desk and activated the computer. After several minutes of quick hacking, she was into the hospital monitoring system. She wasn't supposed to be there, but she didn't want to go back into the Minister's room to insure that Dorlian was still alive. After activating the cameras, she verified that Minister Dorlian was still breathing. The security camera was well concealed and designed to leave no place in the room available for concealment. 

The intruder, however, didn't seem to realize that this was the way things were supposed to be. It took the nurse several long minutes of watching the screen before a faint movement revealed his location. Even then, she initially dismissed it as simply a flicker on the screen. The more she thought about it, however, the more she was sure that the mysterious man was right there in the corner, keeping a watchful vigil over the comatose diplomat.

The next morning, the night nurse walked her replacement through the ward and showed her each patient and briefly explained any changes in status. Arriving at the room of the Foreign Minister, the two women quietly entered. The nurse who was being relieved breathed a quiet sigh of relief upon seeing that Miss Peacecraft was still alive. Casting a quick look around, she noted that the strange guardian had vanished.

******************************************************************************

8 October, A.C. 202

Zechs gently pushed open the door to Relena's room and led the procession in. They'd been called only an hour ago, and informed that Relena had regained consciousness after five days in a light coma. From her bed, Relena smiled wanly at her friends. Her nephew broke from his mother's grasp to hop onto her bed and give her a big kiss. Relena laughed at Peter's antics even as Zechs gently plucked the little boy from her bed. After a whispered reprimand, the tyke was almost surly until Relena winked at him. His good humor restored, the heir to the Peacecraft name wiggled his way to the ground and started playing with Alexandra and Michelle. Despite numerous pleas and wide-eyed looks, Quatre and Dorothy refused to let their little babies play on the floor.

After learning all that had happened in the battle after the mansion had been destroyed, Relena began to tell them what had happened to her.

_Relena jerked back as she realized that there was no way for the Gundams to return and save her. This time she would have to save herself. After ordering the control room staff into the nearby bunker, and knowing that there would be no room for her and Pagan there, she grabbed the old servant's hand and ran as fast as possible to the ground floor…and the shelter there._

_Pagan had tripped on the stairs, however, and sprained his ankle badly. Supporting her friend, Relena had tried to drag him the rest of the way to the shelter. That was when the first barrage had hit the Mansion. The blast had rocked the ancient home to the foundation, and flung Relena from Pagan's side. She'd struggled to her feet only to find Pagan half buried in rubble._

_He had refused to let her die by his side, and had ordered her to get to the shelter before the whole place came down. With tears streaming down her face, she'd turned for the protection of the armored bunker. Relena had just barely gotten through the door when the next attack wave had sent rubble flying through the door after her, knocking her out._

"I think the same blast that put out my lights slammed the door mostly shut," Relena finished, feeling suddenly drained from the memories of Pagan's last moments. "The next thing I can remember is waking up here in the hospital."

Before any of the gathered friends could say anything, the door was pushed open and Heero slipped in. He ignored the rather frosty gazes he was receiving from some of the women and walked over to stand beside Duo. Duo glanced at Heero and nodded, then offered a quiet welcome to the still silent pilot. After several rather stilted moments of silence, conversation turned to the rebuilding of the Mansion and what they would now do with their Gundams.

Too many news satellites had been able to pick up the battle waged, and while they had lost the Gundams upon re-entry, the various news organizations of the world had eagerly reported on the tremendous battle waged in space. The Preventers had made an official statement that the Gundams had been retrieved to deal with the threat of Neo-Oz, which was bent on taking over where Romafeller and Oz had left off. 

The last official statement by Colonel Une, Commander in Chief of the Preventers, was that the Gundams were once more hidden away against another such threat. The pilots were thanked and bid happy lives away from war. While news hounds tried to get the identities of the pilots, Lady Une had quietly quit the stage. 

Quatre had quietly thanked all that was holy at that moment, since all records of who the pilots were had been destroyed with Libra and _Peacemillion_ seven years ago. As plans were made as to where the Gundams would be hid, the pilot of _Sandrock_ turned his gaze to Heero and frowned. There was something oddly different in the Oriental's cold appearance that unnerved him, and it took him several moments before he could tell what it was. The way Heero stood, the determined set to his jaw, and the tense air he gave off, even while standing still, were exactly as they had always been. He held his head at the same angle as always, but there was something about it that made Quatre wonder what had changed in the perfect soldier. There was a slight cut on his lip from something, but it still wasn't quite what he was looking at. Looking at. That's when it hit him. Heero's eyes, the eyes that caused those around him to shudder with chill or terror, those pools of deep ocean-blue, had changed. For a moment, just a moment, the moment where Heero was not aware he was being watched. In that moment, Quatre thought that his eyes were almost…soft.

Softness in the eyes of Heero Yuy? Impossible, wasn't it? Heero didn't behave that way. There was nothing soft about him; he was nothing but soldier in every aspect. Even after all the other pilots had moved on, Heero hadn't. He'd retained all his previous detachment and cold demeanor. Yet that look was unmistakable. That look was a look of affection, of desperate wish, and it just didn't belong in those eyes. Unless, Quatre looked at Relena, lying pale and exhausted on the bed, unless Relena… 

That's when realization struck him so hard that all the muted voices in the room fell away and he found himself opening his mouth to speak to Heero, as if they were the only people on the planet. But words failed him so he simply stood and stared, oblivious of anyone or anything except the look in Heero's eyes.

Heero, feeling someone's eyes on him, turned to discover whom they belonged to. He looked straight at Quatre and the truth in his gaze was enough to cause Quatre to steady himself on the nearest possible shoulder, which happened to belong to Duo. Surprised, the American looked first to Quatre with a questioning expression, but before he could look around to see what had entranced the Arabian enough to lose his balance while standing still, Heero had slipped from the room without a word.

"What's going on?" Duo whispered to Quatre, who still stood shocked at what he had seen. Dorothy had turned her attention from her children to her husband, and several other occupants of the room were doing likewise. From her bed, Relena attempted to sit up, and was restrained by her brother, who had already realized what had happened and that Heero had gone again without a word. "Yo, Quatre," Duo persisted, shaking the blonde pilot's shoulder slightly. "What was that all about?"

"He's leaving again," came a different voice's whisper, which caused all eyes to regard the trembling young woman on the hospital bed. Her eyes shone in the twilight, and her hand came to rest at her throat. The pulsing of her manner communicated to everyone the pain Heero's departure had inflicted. Zechs smoothed Relena's hair from her forehead and began to whisper to her soothingly, but she was no longer hearing. Trowa took a step forward, but it was obvious he was unsure of what he wanted to accomplish by coming nearer. "He's running away," she continued in a choked voice, closing her eyes against the strain of keeping her emotions locked back where no one would see them. "Why, Heero?" She murmured mournfully and slumped into Zechs' side.

"Relena!" Gasped several of the women as they moved closer to the bedside. Peter began to cry sorrowfully at what had happened, and in all that commotion Quatre heard Duo's voice in his ear, and saw his hand clench.

"Running again, eh?" The braided youth growled in his throat. "Not this time, pal." Before Quatre could grab him to explain what he had seen in Heero's eyes, Duo had rushed out of the room after his companion. He knew that Duo didn't understand completely what Heero was doing, and he knew that there was going to be some unpleasant words exchanged between them. But maybe, he thought as he looked on Relena's sad face, maybe that's just what he needs.

By the time Duo caught up to Heero, he was in the parking lot, about to get into his car and drive away. This time it might be forever, but not if Duo had any say in it at all. He was going to change this. It wasn't right, and Relena didn't deserve it. No one deserved it, and it was about time to make sure Heero knew that.

"Heero!" Duo shouted, breaking into a run, intent on flinging himself in the path of the vehicle if he had to. No one should have to live in that kind of desperation and disappointment. And if he could fix it then he would give it his all. "Hey, Heero!"

Silently and stoically, Heero turned to face his friend. Duo swallowed at the fierceness of his countenance, but he'd never held back his opinion once he started, and he had definitely started. 

"You really are a piece of work, you know that?" Duo panted more from anger than exertion as he loped to a stop next to the man he had once called his friend. Heero's lack of reaction to this statement only spurred him on. "How can you be so unobservant? So uncaring?" The list of adjectives grew, most beginning with an "un," and some of them were repeated multiple times so that Heero would be sure not to miss the impact. However, Heero stood quietly through it all, until the very last. Only with the last word did Heero give any indication that he'd been listening to any of it. "Coward!" Duo spat the final blow to the man in front of him and paused for their effect. He was shaking with anger now. How could someone be so selfish? How could a savior of the earth and the colonies have no feeling? But with the last word, Heero's eyes widened slightly then narrowed into dangerous slits.

"Don't accuse me," he growled curtly and opened his car door. For a moment, Duo was almost afraid, but fury would not allow him to let this go. He reached over and slammed it closed once more. He was not going to run away this time.

"Even if we stand here 'til spring and even if I have to beat it into your head, you're not going anywhere until – "

"What exactly do you want me to do?" Heero interrupted coldly, his hand still on his door. "Do you want me to pretend to be something I'm not? Give up who I am? I can't do that Duo, not even for you." Duo took a step back, shocked at the outburst.

"It's not for me," he said softly, frustrated that his words had done nothing even remotely in the direction he'd been hoping. "It's for you." Heero stared as if Duo were speaking another language. It made the rage flare up and he found himself shouting again. "Jeez, man, what's your problem anyway? What do you have against happiness? It would be so easy for you to be happy, Heero; do you have any idea how easy it would be? Why can't you just admit –"

"Not even for you," Heero cut him off again, obviously not wanting to hear. His hand clenched on the door and he leaned his forehead against his car in the attitude of someone experiencing terrible pain. What was the deal? Duo reclaimed the step he had taken backwards to consider his companion. Why was he making this so difficult? They weren't in the middle of a war now. Why couldn't he allow himself to give in, just once?

"Heero," he began, more softly this time, apologetically, hoping that going at the issue a different way would have more effect. 

"If anyone could understand," Heero broke in before Duo could get started. He spoke quietly, hesitantly, shaking his head in apparent disappointment. "I thought you would." For some reason, this hurt Duo more than anything else Heero had ever said to him did, and he took a turn in shaking his head.

"No, Heero, I don't understand," he could barely hear his own words now. They had been friends, and what sort of friend didn't understand? But this was Heero! He didn't want to be understood. It almost was enough to make him angry once more. "No one will ever understand you, but I know of someone with a heck of a lot more patience than me who would give her life to try." In a quick, frustrated motion, Heero scrubbed a hand through his hair. He avoided Duo's eyes as he brushed past him to open his door, but he gave him one final glare when he slid into the seat. Duo wasn't ready to give up.

"If you drive away," Duo threatened, keeping his hand in a position where Heero would have to shut it in the door to close it. "You'd better be picking up a pizza because you're not going anywhere until you talk to her. Even if it takes the rest of my life, I'll find you and you're going to have to face this sooner or later." But it was wasted on Heero, who glared until Duo lost his nerve and his strength and removed his hand so he could slam the door closed. He then drove away to who knew where and left Duo frustrated and very alone in the leaf-strewn parking lot.

"Duo!" Quatre came trotting to his side a moment later, but he didn't move. His mind was reeling with the argument that hadn't really been an argument. He felt lost and confused that he could no longer guess Heero's moods or feelings. Perhaps, he was thinking, perhaps I was wrong about him and Relena. And if that were the case, then Relena would be... "There you are. This is the biggest parking lot I've –"

"How's Relena doing?" Duo interrupted, staring after the departed soldier. Quatre repositioned his mouth from what he had been meaning to say to what Duo wanted him to answer. He wondered, in that moment of silence before he said anything, what had happened before he'd gotten they're to have put the cheerful pilot into such a detached frame of mind. 

"She's sleeping. The doctors said she'd be in and out for a few days. She's really had it rough after all, and I suppose us driving Heero off didn't help matters any." Duo threw a glance over at the blonde pilot, and it almost made him shiver.

"What are you talking about?" Duo's tone was enough to make Quatre cringe. That must have been some argument they'd had to make him like this. "He's just getting a pizza. Come on." Quatre recovered quickly from this completely random comment, and pursued his original purpose for following Duo down, even if it had been too late to include Heero.

"He really does love her, you know," Quatre began, which gained a reaction quite opposite to what he was expecting. Duo rounded on him, eyes blazing. 

"Well someone needs to tell him that, don't you think? This whole 'I can't get close to anyone, I'm not supposed to be human' act is getting really old! I mean, he's got people here who care about him, and all he can do is run away and make us worry. Why does he do that?" Now Duo had not really been expecting an answer to this, and was ready to keep going on his tirade, but Quatre gave him one that made him stop right in his tracks.

"He's afraid," Quatre cut in very softly before Duo could get started on another round of severe Heero bashing. Duo paused with finger raised and mouths open. Drawing his eyebrows together in incredulity at the statement, he allowed his shoulders to drop and his hand to fall.

"Heero's what?" He asked just to check his hearing.

"He's afraid," Quatre repeated calmly and firmly.

"Heero?" Quatre nodded in the affirmative, but Duo still was not convinced, and it showed.

"Are we talking about the Heero who just single-handedly vanquished the threat to earth? The guy who would sign his Christmas cards 'omae wo korosu' if he bothered to send any? The Heero who can self-detonate without flinching? The Heero who sets his own broken bones with only a tennis-match grunt? Is this the Heero you're referring to or is there another Heero running around to whom I haven't been introduced yet?"

"We're talking about the same guy, Duo." 

"No way. He doesn't work like that. Fear isn't in his vocabulary." Quatre shook his head patiently. 

"That's where you're wrong. It comes right before failure." For the second time in ten minutes Duo was shocked speechless. He was about to make another statement of protest when his eyes opened wide in revelation. His foot stopped above the ground, hovering there because its owner had forgotten how to complete the process of walking as he was thinking too hard about something else. All of a sudden, he grinned at Quatre. Things were starting to make sense.

"I've," Duo stuttered once the ability to speak was regained. "I've got to find him, Quatre. We can fix this, we can make this work, and we can –"

"_We_ can't do anything, Duo," Quatre placed a calming hand on Duo's arm to restrain him from sprinting after Heero's long departed vehicle. "This isn't our place." Duo gave him a look that clearly read as, "who are you and what have you done with the real Quatre?"

"What do you mean?" He said out loud, eager to get moving, to perform action and be doing something in a constructive direction. Duo never did have the patience needed for these kinds of delicate situations. "Not our place? Jeez, man, they're our friends! We've got to help them out. I mean, what if Heero doesn't come back this time?"

"He'll come back. On his own and when he's ready." 

Duo obviously thought that leaving Heero to his own romantic sensibilities was a lost cause; the look in his eyes said it all. But he kept his mouth shut and simply shrugged. "I give him three days to get here," he warned in the same low dangerous voice he'd used when Quatre had heard him threaten in the hospital room. "And if he doesn't come back by then –"

"It's ok, Duo. I mean, I thought he was only getting a pizza after all." This took Duo off guard for a moment, but once he'd remembered saying those exact words the amusement of the statement made them both break into laughter.

October 11

Though the wind was blowing madly across the world, lashing the windows with rain and lost leaves, it did not wake either the young woman sleeping peacefully on the hospital bed or the young man drowsing in the chair by her side. It had been decided days ago, after the first of many nightmares that it would not be good to leave Relena so her friends had divided up the days into shifts so that she would constantly have someone there. On this particular drizzly October evening, Quatre had taken vigil. Admittedly, however, it was rather dull watching someone sleep and the wind had such a lulling effect on him that he quickly found himself nodding off. It wasn't until the slight shifting of air and light floated from the opening door that he found himself completely awake. Someone was entering the room, and the night nurse wasn't due for another hour at least. Quatre tensed slightly, and slipped his hand under his coat for his gun. Should the intruder's intentions in entering the foreign minister's room prove less than friendly…

But the room stayed silent, and if Quatre wasn't looking right at the shadow on the floor he would have sworn that the door opening had been his imagination, or part of a dream he'd been having. But the shadow was there, cast across the bed and onto the floor on the other side. It was tall and lanky, and from what Quatre could tell, the owner had a mop of very shaggy hair. He smiled slightly in the dark. The figure moved very close to the bed, and then stood completely still, simply staring at the only reason fear existed in his world.

"It's about time, Heero," Quatre said softly into the night and moonbeams of the room. The shadow tensed on the floor, and an arm was raised reflexively, over the sleeping girl on the bed. "Your shift's been up for quite a while." Quatre raised his eyes from the shadow on the floor to its owner. Heero stood motionless, like a thief caught in the middle of a robbery. Since he was thus, Quatre took it upon himself to examine what the three days that Heero had been gone had done to him. He looked tired, and careworn, and under it all there was a whisper of sorrow that almost made Quatre smile. 

"What do you want me to do?" Heero asked after long moments of this scrutiny. Quatre shook his head. Heero'd been doing this for too long. It was easy for him to do what he was told, even if it seemed an impossible situation. It was doing what he told himself that was the tricky part. But that was life, and it was time that Heero told himself to live.

"That's not up to me, Heero. You know that. There are no more missions, and you're going to have to come up with your own ideas on what you're going to do." Heero looked pained, unsure, and because of this, very unnatural. 

"But –" He faltered, staring down at the girl on the bed. "But I…I can't." Quatre smiled reassuringly.

"Why not, Heero?" Heero's eyes closed tightly, and he leaned on the bed as if he could not stand without its aid. Relena murmured softly in her sleep. The sound almost broke the perfect soldier. His shoulders tensed to the point of trembling, and his knees almost gave way. Quatre watched, amazed. "Let go, Heero," he encouraged in a whisper. "You don't have to keep doing this." Slowly, Heero folded down to the floor, his hands clinging to the bed sheet, and his head bowed. Quatre remained where he was, silent and waiting. It had finally come, and he had been right in his assumptions, but that didn't make him any more prepared for what was to come.

"I can't," Heero choked over and over. It must have been the first time that Quatre had ever heard that phrase from him. Heero could do anything…so long as it required his hands on controls. "I just can't." Quatre stood from his seat and walked around the bed to stand behind Heero. He put out his hand as if to comfort him, but turned away quickly, bringing it down to his side in a fist.

"I know you think that," he eventually said, resting his gaze on Heero's trembling shoulders. "But you're lying to yourself, Heero. You protect yourself with a lie." He might as well have shot the man for the reaction these words inflicted. Heero tensed even further, and his hands slid from the bed to the floor. He bent himself double, completely broken and shuddering. Quatre knelt beside him so he could look into his face, but Heero's eyes were closed and he would not open them to see the truth Quatre was offering.

"What are you afraid of?" Quatre persisted. "Why do you run?"

What am I afraid of? Heero thought within the blackness that had surrounded his mind. Quatre, don't make me think it. Yet it was there, where it had always been, right behind him, following him where he ran, just as swift as he would ever be. And sometimes, he shuddered, even faster.

"I can't," he denied again with venom this time. Quatre would not be put off.

"Yes," he replied mildly. "Yes, you can. Isn't it time you told the truth, Heero? Don't you think we all deserve that? What are you so afraid of?" The tension in his back snapped because of the tightness, and his mind went with it. His muscles went slack, and his head fell between his knees. 

"Her," he heard himself mutter the truth behind most of his disappearances. "It's her." Still Quatre would not be satisfied. The Arabian glanced up at Relena, as if checking to see that she was indeed still resting on the bed, before turning his attention back down to Heero.

"What about her, Heero?" 

Stop! Heero screamed in his head. Don't make me say it! Don't make me admit it, not even to myself. But the question had already prompted up the answer in his mind, and it whirled around him, encompassing him in the darkness of its nature. NO! Heero wailed desperately, trying to curl himself tighter and finding that his muscles would not obey him this time. It's not true; it didn't happen. He just wanted to get away where this terrible confrontation of himself could be buried and forgotten and never attempted again. But it happened, Heero. You know that; you were there. You saw her face, and it was pale and strained, remember? No. There was blood in her hair; can't you see it? No! She was so limp when you picked her out of the dust; you thought she was dead, didn't you? NO! And you know why she was like that, don't you? Stop it! But his mind was crashing in on him, trapping him in horror. He had nowhere to run from it, and it had taken complete control, bringing up the images he had run from three days earlier. He couldn't stand it. You know why she was like that, don't you? What about her makes you so afraid? And under it all, the only comforting phrase he could hear, and in the end, the one he turned to: "Just let go, Heero."

"It's because I failed her!" He had meant to scream these words, send them flying away from him and hopefully into oblivion, never to plague him again. He had meant to shout them, make the whole world hear his pathetic confession. Yet when the words finally left his mouth, they were barely more than a whisper, and only faithful Quatre, who was still kneeling at his side, could hear. But having him, that one person, hear them and smile, was enough. Heero let go, and Quatre finally put his comforting hand on his shoulder. 

"You saved her, Heero," he heard himself being reassured, but his mind was still murmuring. "You're all she's ever wanted." He shook his head.

"No, I can't stay. I have to go." The hand on his shoulder tightened, as if Quatre expected to keep him restrained.

"Listen to me, Heero. You're not alone." Of course he was! No one was like him; there couldn't be another more pathetic creature in existence. The one person he had sworn he would protect was the person who received the most injury from him. The only reason Quatre couldn't understand this was because he'd never felt the same. "I know you don't believe me right now, but we both have the same feelings. Do you know why you're so afraid of failing her?" Now _this_ was an easy answer at least.

"Because she would be killed if I were to –"

"No," Quatre cut him off. "There are no more assassination threats, Heero. No more war for now. No, you're afraid of failing her because you love her." The shock of these words made Heero look up from the floor, and there was nothing but pure truth in Quatre's aqua eyes. Love her? But what did that mean?

"But Quatre, what is –"

"I can't explain it to you, Heero, and neither can she. You'll have to realize it for yourself." And with one more smile, Quatre had risen to his feet, strong and able and quite in harmony with his own emotions. How Heero envied him at that moment. He swept up his coat from the chair and left Heero alone in the darkened room, the only sound being the soft breath of the girl on the bed.

Heero stared at his hand as if it belonged to someone else. What was he doing? What was he thinking of? Why was he even here? But his hand didn't tell him the answer to these questions. He soon grew tired of the floor and rose to stand sentinel over his charge. But this soon proved to be too far away, so he took Quatre's chair by the bed. Relena muttered in her sleep, and he thought he caught his name in the murmur. Then his hand had reached out, almost without any thought on his part, and clasped itself around her slender fingers, and it had stayed there, even when he looked at it in unexpected surprise.

"Why do you want me, Relena?" He asked her quietly as he watched how the rain on the window moved the moonlight on her face. "I disappoint you so often." Maybe, he speculated, maybe that was love. Maybe it meant wanting to be with someone, even though they sometimes made you mad, or hurt you. And maybe it meant wanting to be with someone, even though you knew that you were not good enough. Was it the hand that held onto hers on the bed sheet? Was that love? No, it wasn't; he was sure of that. It wasn't love itself, but it might be a communicator of love. Weariness seeped over Heero as he pondered the ever-elusive meaning of love, and without realizing it, he allowed himself to lay his head down by her shoulder, and he never let go of her hand.

That was how Duo found them an hour later. His mouth, which was open in greeting, closed in a smile. Quatre had been right after all. After a few moments of witnessing this touching scene, he changed his original plan. He quickly stepped inside, not making a sound because of Heero's acute senses, and stepped out again mere moments later. It was a good thing, he thought, as he giggled to himself once again in the pale safety of the corridor, that Relena was in a deeper sleep than Heero.

When Heero woke, Relena was already awake and staring at him with shining eyes. He straightened quickly, realizing that his awkward position had made for several stiff places in his spine. He was about to raise his arm to massage his neck, when he noticed that something was restraining him from doing so. In looking down, he saw that it was closed on Relena's, and then everything returned to him. He remembered his talk with Quatre, and then sitting beside the bed and then falling asleep.

"You came back to me," Relena's voice was weak, but full of joy. He almost smiled as she looked at his hand, the hand that stubbornly stayed where it was. "Oh Heero," she sighed in contentment. What? He wanted to ask her. What is it? But she was satisfied with uttering only his name, and then catching him with her eyes. They were blue, he noticed. Relena, he thought silently, not being able to make his mouth move to speak. Relena, what is love? Is it my hand holding yours? Is it because I knew what color your eyes were? Is it because I remember your birthday? But Relena did not understand his thoughts. How could she be expected to?

"Don't leave me," she finally begged, her eyes suddenly brimming with fear. "Stay with me this time." He meant to say something to her, and several things floated through and out of his head. Eventually he could only come up with one word, and that hadn't been the one he'd been intending.

"Why?" He winced at his own question. That wasn't what he meant, but Relena only smiled.

"I would have stayed with you," she whispered. "No matter what." No matter what? And then it all made sense. Love, he realized, was wanting to stay with someone, forever, no matter what. Quatre was right. 

"Relena," he whispered as he attempted to speak again. He wanted to tell her what he'd just figured out, feeling slightly like a school kid who was excited about delivering an answer to a problem he'd been working on for a while. But his mouth stopped at her name, as if it was trying to remember what it felt like to speak it. 

"Yes, Heero?" She prompted, looking at him earnestly. He knew she'd probably figured out his answer a very long time ago, when he hadn't been able to see it. And he was sure that she would always understand how it worked better than he would. She smiled encouragingly and lightly placed her other hand to cover his. That was when they both noticed it. Somehow, there was a ring upon her finger. A beautiful golden ring with two white gold doves on either side, enveloping a large diamond in their outstretched wings. Although Heero had no idea where it had come from, Relena seemed to think it was all his plan. She beamed up at him, and the first tears of happiness he'd ever caused her trickled down her face. She held up her hand to stare at the ring, as if checking to see it was indeed really there. Then she used the same hand to caress his cheek. For a moment, he almost drew back, but there was a different look in her eyes this time. It said that she would take him, his faults and all, and she would keep him with her for the rest of their lives, and she wouldn't care how many times he disappointed her, so long as he stayed by her side. Her eyes assured him all of this, and then they told him something else. They told him, quite clearly, that Relena loved him, without his Gundam, without his gun, she loved just him, she always had and she always would. This newly acquired knowledge, though highly priced, was well worth it. Heero sighed, feeling safe in her presence for the first time. Even if he did something wrong, it wouldn't matter. Relena wouldn't give up on him for a few mistakes, even if he tried to escape himself. However, he tried a small smile as he looked at the brave girl on the bed, he didn't think he would try anymore.

And though he never actually proposed, and she never actually said yes, somehow they both knew that Heero would not be running off again.

_A new beginning…_


End file.
